Irrespective of controversies and frustrated efforts, carbon forestry—the sequestering of greenhouse gases in forests—remains a key element of climate change mitigation. Carbon forestry drives regularly rely on a market-based conservation framework, where forest dwellers are remunerated for their service of maintaining forests through dedicated financial instruments routing global funds. In this article, I turn to India’s first large-scale carbon forestry project, situated in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, and trace how carbon forestry plots are subjected to different temporal trajectories on different levels. I show that the marketing of emission reduction certificates (CER), underpinning carbon forestry, posits emergent forests as permanent sinks. The administrative procedures of this Indian carbon forestry project, however, aim at providing for these forests for sixty years. Finally, I show that villagers perceive a sense of closure, suspending dedicated care and governance routines as the project appears to dismantle and future payments become uncertain. I argue that these different temporal registers not only reveal contradictions within carbon forestry approaches but they also highlight the fragility of attempts to economize forests through supposedly green financial instruments and, therefore, the limited impact of what might appear as neoliberal agendas, in time.

尽管存在争议和受挫的努力，碳林业——将温室气体隔离在森林中——仍然是减缓气候变化的关键要素。碳林业驱动通常依赖于基于市场的保护框架，在该框架中，森林居民通过全球资金的专用金融工具为其维护森林的服务获得报酬。在本文中，我将转向位于喜马偕尔邦山区的印度第一个大型碳林业项目，并追溯碳林业样地如何在不同层次上受到不同时间轨迹的影响。我表明，支持碳林业的减排证书 (CER) 的营销将新兴森林视为永久性汇。然而，这个印度碳林业项目的行政程序，旨在为这些森林提供六十年。最后，我展示了村民们感觉到一种封闭感，随着项目似乎要拆除和未来的付款变得不确定，他们暂停了专门的护理和治理程序。我认为，这些不同的时间记录不仅揭示了碳林业方法中的矛盾，而且还突出了通过所谓的绿色金融工具来节约森林的尝试的脆弱性，因此，及时可能表现为新自由主义议程的影响有限。