NBA and SBBs have been set up in most states but remain inactive.
India is a rich country in terms of immense natural resources it has; so much so that, despite of having just 2.4 percent of the world’s land and 4 percent water, it is one of the 17 mega-biodiversity countries with 7-8% of the recorded species of the world. The country has about 46,000 plant and 91,000 animal species, making the Western Ghats and the Himalayas amongst the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots.
While the villagers conserve and protect these species, little have not yet benefitted by their yeomen service, although the Government of India has passed the Biodiversity Act (BDA), in 2002 as India was committed to International Convention on Biological Diversity, a 1993 treaty to conserve biodiversity, promote its sustainable use and enable “fair and equitable sharing of benefits” with the local communities, reports Hindustan Times, August 12, 2016.
Local grassroots governing institutions of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) were supposed to prepare people’s biodiversity registers (PBRs) or the records of a region’s biological resources—plants, animals and the traditional knowledge of the locals, but less than 3% PRIs in 15 states have prepared them and its absence have puts several endangered species at the risk of extinction, denies benefits to locals from the commercial use of biological resources and lets industrial projects getaway by not disclosing their destruction in their environment.
PBRs are the base of biodiversity protection and benefits from it to the locals as it forms a network from the local to the national levels—biodiversity management committees (BMCs) at the local level, involving all panchayats, municipalities and city corporations, to the state biodiversity boards (SBBs) and, finally at the top, to the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the Centre,. The BMCs are required to prepare PBRs of bio-resources (both wild and cultivated), work for protecting the resources and charge a fee on their commercial use.
While the NBA and SBBs in most states have been in place, less than 16% local bodies had constituted BMC still April, 2016. Worse, less than 3% local bodies have prepared the PBRs.
And, among these 15 states, Kerala prepared the maximum PBRs and has constituted BMCs in 65% of its local bodies. Little wonder, BDA is not being implemented and many industrial projects are getting environmental clearances in biodiversity-rich regions, although, they destroy biodiversity to a great extent.
Although gram panchayats can levy a fee if an industry uses the bio-resources commercially in its area, but only one panchayat in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand has collected a levy of Rs. 1,285.
Lack of seriousness by the apex body; the NBA, is causing havoc on India’s rich biodiversity and yielding no benefits to locals who are conserving and protecting it since generations.