In January last year, Gurgaon-based climate-tech company, Varaha ClimateAG Private Limited, struck the largest ever biochar carbon removal deals with Google and Microsoft. It was to sell 100,000 carbon removal credits each to the tech giants.

Biochar is a charcoal-like material made by burning biomass with low oxygen. This process locks away carbon that the biomass would otherwise release when it rots or burns. Applied to soil, biochar can increase fertility, by helping it hold water and nutrients.

Varaha has generated 2,65,203 biochar-based carbon removal credits since its formation in 2022, according to the Global C- Sink Registry data at the time of writing this report. This means it prevented as many tonnes of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Each tonne translates to one carbon credit, ready to be sold in the carbon market to polluting companies to help them meet their climate pledges. The money has followed. 

The company’s revenue jumped almost 97 times between FY 2022-23 and 2024-25. In the last fiscal year, it recorded a profit, of over Rs 1 crore, for the first time.

But Varaha sells more than carbon. For example, in the Banni grasslands of Gujarat’s Kachchh district, its pitch to buyers is that its biochar also brings back degraded grassland, improves soil and supports the communities that make it. This is also one of the projects linked to Google’s credits.

Though that same promise stands tested in what was once Asia’s finest tropical grassland before it was dominated by Prosopis growth. Newslaundry visited four villages in Banni, interviewed more than 20 people involved in biochar production, and studied Varaha’s project documents. We found that the benefits of biochar production evaded both the grasslands as well as its people.

First, consider the benefits for the locals.

Prosopis, a perennial shrub native to South America and Mexico, was introduced to the grasslands in the sixties by the forest department to check the spread of the Great Rann of Kachchh. But the department in 2019 started a restoration project as Prosopis took up nearly half of the grasslands. The species made its way into the lives of local communities, with some of them involved in Varaha’s “community-led” Prosopis business. Though they got a fraction of the profit.

Villagers cut these trees in common lands and burned them in open metal kilns. They doused the fires with tankers of water in a region that has little to spare. While Varaha earned nearly Rs 25 per kg of biochar, it gave Rs 10 at most to villagers producing the biochar, as per our assessment based on one liberal set of available data-estimates and interviews with locals and an NGO. 

Villagers still don’t know how much Varaha earns from the trees taken off their commons. The company, meanwhile, is moving on to industrial gasifiers that can consume 50 tonnes of Prosopis a day. In that model, Banni’s communities may be little more than suppliers of wood.

Second, the Prosopis has grown back denser, say villagers. Soil studies by Sahjeevan, a Bhuj-based NGO that facilitated Varaha’s projects, were inconclusive and some even showed a negative impact.

Third, consider the environmental damage. Each biochar kiln needed about 500 litres of water in a region short of it. Varaha says it offsets the methane from biochar production by planting trees. We could not find those plantations on the registry meant to validate them. Mongabay India had reported on some of the issues before.

Prosopis juliflora, in the local dialect, is called “gando bawar” or “mad tree” due to its resilience in drought-prone climate and saline soil. Its roots go deep and can suck 36 litres of water a day from the soil, making it difficult for other vegetation to grow. In Banni, it has caused a serious decline in the grassland flora and fauna. Its leaves, roots and seeds produce biochemicals that reduce seed germination and growth of other plants. 

A villager in Dedhiya village in Banni walks among Prosopis thickets.

The Banni region consists of 48 villages divided into 19 local self-governance bodies or panchayats. Its population was 21,338 in 2011-12, according to a 2022 research at ICAR, Rajasthan.

The semi-nomadic community in Kachch, including Banni, and some parts of Rajasthan, is known as Maldharis (cattle-owners). They are landless and not allowed to carry out agricultural activities on the villages’ common lands that are vested with the panchayats. Though they do have access to the commons to graze animals and collect non-timber produce. 

Maldharis are also known for breeding the Banni buffalo, a breed that got official recognition in 2010. They breed these buffaloes predominantly, since they can feed on Prosopis’ seedpods and don’t get hurt by its thorny thickets. Villagers told us that their cows turned sick or died after eating........

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