With a total area of 3,287,263 sq. km., India covers about 2.4 per cent of the world’s land area. It is home to8 per cent of recorded species. That includes more than 49,000 plants and about 1,02,000 animals.
It administers and maintains its biodiversity through a three-tiered structure, as promulgated in the Biological Diversity Act, 2002: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs), and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs). The Act was amended in 2023: Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023.
India had set up 2,76,653 BMCs and 2,72,648 People’s Biodiversity Registers by September 2025; between 2017 and 2025, it mobilised Rs. 216.31 crore through the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism.
Established under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol, ABS is a framework that recognises countries and communities from which biological resources come. It refers to the way in which genetic resources may be accessed, and how the benefits that result from their use are shared between people or countries using the resources and the people or countries that provide them (providers).
M.Sc. Botany students from the school of botany at Maa Shakumbhari University, Punwarka, Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, recently examined and published in June a review of how the Biological Diversity Act 2002 fared over the years.
Archit Kapil, a co-author, says he wanted to examine whether the legal framework under the Act, including NBA, SBBs, BMCs, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS), and People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), is achieving its intended goals.
“The review was motivated by the gap between strong policies on paper and their practical implementation on the ground,” Kapil tells Hot Rock. It identifies ten major gaps between policies and implementation such as weak institutional capacity, inadequate funding, low public awareness, incomplete PBRs, poor enforcement and overlapping jurisdictional mandates.
Although all ten gaps mentioned have a bearing on each other and are interconnected, Archit says three areas require particular attention.
Weak institutional capacity is the most crucial. Without knowledgeable people and expertise, a policy can unravel in no time. Second comes lack of awareness, as in lack of awareness of biodiversity rights among local communities. They are also oblivious of their role in conservation. Thirdly, weak enforcement of laws.
“Institutional strengthening is the foundation because it improves enforcement, awareness, and implementation together,” Kapil tells Hot Rock. He says India needs better coordination between academic institutions, government agencies, and local communities.
Universities can play a big role though biodiversity research, ecological monitoring, training programmes, restoration projects, and improving the scientific quality of People’s Biodiversity Registers.
“Capacity building is essential because biodiversity governance requires expertise in ecology, law, biotechnology, traditional knowledge, and community participation,” he says. Habitat destruction, climate change, wildlife trade, invasive species, pollution, and overexploitation are the drivers of biodiversity loss in India.
According to the review, urbanisation, expansion of agriculture and mining have destroyed or degraded about 30 per cent of original habitat, making species critically endangered.
The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023, brought in a slew of changes such as: it waived some restrictions from ABS requirements for certain registered AYUSH practitioners and traditional medicine users; some offences have been shifted from criminal to monetary penalties.
The research community appreciates reduced regulatory burdens for some traditional medicine users. It also commends more streamlined approval procedures through updated rules and online systems.
However, there are concerns that largescale exemptions may trigger more misuse; that soft-peddling criminal activities may weaken the guardrails of protection.
“On-ground improvements are visible in areas like increased digitalisation, ABS regulations, and institutional expansion, but challenges remain in funding, capacity, and effective local implementation,” Kapil says.
In another development, India has become the first country to start a voluntary certification programme that rewards businesses that share benefits from their biodiversity. Per the 6 June note, MoEFCC and NBA launch World’s first ever dedicated Voluntary Certification Scheme for Incentivisation of Access and Benefit Sharing (VCS-I-ABS) under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
It’s a combined initiative of the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC), the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Quality Council of India (QCI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) India.
“With this, India becomes the first country among the 196 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to operationalise a dedicated Voluntary Certification Scheme on Access and Benefit Sharing,” the note says.
The press note says the VCS-I-ABS helps create “a brand for the business entities, through an award of a logo and a certificate to those entities that have already complied with the ABS requirements under the Biological Diversity Act, Biological Diversity Rules, Access and Benefit Sharing Regulations and its subsequent amendments.”
The logo combines a plant symbolising biological and medicinal values and lotus leaf symbolising Indian cultural ethos and enlightenment with hands symbolising care, protection, and sustainability.
The circle represents a holistic approach to fair and equitable benefit sharing, while the acronym ABS anchors the design and reinforces recall value, as per the note.
The scheme aims to create a market differentiator for entities that are certified; to provide a choice for the consumers to purchase commodities from the certified businesses; to make India a centre of ABS-compliant entities; to bring the laggards into the fold. A government of India-UNDP Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) provides financial support for the scheme.
