Morarka Foundation began its first sustainable livelihood promotion programme way back in 1994-95 from semi-arid region of Thar Desert in Rajasthan. The lessons learnt and experiences gained in Rajasthan coupled with innovations made in the implementation methodology, enabled this project to spread over 21 areas and this process is still continuing.

In the first project, only those families were covered who could withstand the temporary losses in their incomes during transition/project implementation period. The participatory beneficiaries were also required to contribute their share towards project implementation cost. During this project, those families were left out which could not bring in their share of funds to participate in the project.

To identify resource for this category of rural poor, while Morarka Foundation was looking for options, it realized that the funds can be generated through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), to partially subsidise these resource poor families.

"CDM is a project based mechanism which involves developing and implementing projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions thereby generating carbon credits that can be sold on the carbon market."

Organic agriculture is one among the broad spectrum of project methods that are supportive of the environment. It is the one of the most powerful tools in the fight against global warming. The ability of organic agriculture to be both a significant carbon sink and to be less dependent on fossil fuel inputs has long term implications for global agriculture and its role in mitigating green house gases and increase our planet's ability to positively absorb and utilize green house gases. It is a systematic strategy, which has a large potential to reduce the emissions by sequestering CO₂ in vegetation and soils. For instance, N₂O emissions can be reduced by shifting from chemical fertilizers to vermicompost instead. Another way to reduce GHG emission is the reduced consumption of fossil fuel at domestic level (by switching from non-renewable fuel to renewable biomass fuel, by the use of improved cooking stoves) as well as at farm level (through reduced machinery use due to less tillage and irrigation requirement). Thus it is a winning strategy with multiple benefits and virtually no risk.

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