GSK signs an eight year, 500,000 tonne carbon removal deal with Varaha across 50,000 hectares in India

GSK has signed an eight year agreement with Varaha to purchase more than 500,000 nature based carbon removal credits generated by regenerative agriculture on 50,000 hectares of farmland in Punjab and Haryana, northern India. Announced on Thursday 11 September, the deal delivers roughly 100,000 tonnes of removals a year between 2028 and 2033. Varaha, founded in India in 2022, works with smallholder farmers and has set itself the goal of sequestering one billion tonnes of CO2e on smallholder land.

The credits come from switching farmers away from residue burning, intensive tillage and flood irrigated transplanted rice, and towards direct seeded rice, reduced tillage and incorporation of crop residues into the soil. Varaha's first monitoring period, covering 42,000 hectares, reported 4,574 tonnes of PM2.5 emissions avoided, 59.5 billion litres of water saved and an average 12 to 16 percent increase in participating household income. Crop residue burning in Punjab and Haryana is a major contributor to the winter air pollution episodes over Delhi, which is why the air quality figures sit alongside the carbon numbers.

Adele Cheli, GSK's vice president for environmental sustainability, said the agreement demonstrates net zero progress with co benefits for health, nature and communities. Madhur Jain, Varaha's co founder and chief executive, put the commercial logic more bluntly: burning stops when the alternative pays, and credit revenue funds the equipment and labour that make the alternative possible. Long term offtake commitments are what let a developer finance that transition up front.

For CFOs and ESG managers evaluating removals as part of a net zero plan, the structure is the point: a named buyer, a named developer, a specific volume, a defined land area, a fixed delivery window and a multi year commitment that gives the project revenue certainty. Eight year agreements also remove the year to year procurement volatility that has made some corporate carbon programmes hard to audit. Soil carbon removals still carry permanence and measurement questions, so buyers should expect scrutiny of the monitoring methodology and reversal buffers before counting these credits toward a net zero target under the GHG Protocol or SBTi rules.

The deal landed the day before BRICS leaders in New Delhi reaffirmed carbon market cooperation while opposing border carbon measures. Corporate buyers securing long term supply from Indian projects are operating in a market that is expanding commercially and contested politically at the same time, and India's own Carbon Credit Trading Scheme will shape which of these agricultural credits stay in the voluntary market and which are claimed domestically.