India, Sept. 7 -- As global climate talks push market-based land restoration, India is rethinking its grasslands once dismissed as "wastelands".

Scientists now recognise them as vital ecosystems, yet new carbon and biodiversity credit schemes risk repeating old plantation logic.

With soil carbon hard to measure and commons poorly protected in law, the real test is whether pastoral communities retain control over their rangelands.

The 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCD COP17) has just closed in Ulaanbaatar, in the United Nations International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. Much of the summit was about money. The convention estimates that land restoration needs about $355 ...