SP Vasudeva
Former HP Forest Chief Conservation Officer
Biodiversity is an important natural resource that was managed in India under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which was enacted on the insistence of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. The Act worked well through his three-tier governance structure of the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), State Biodiversity Boards and Panchayat-level Biodiversity Management Committees. Rather than initiating measures to conserve, propagate and sustain biodiversity, the law announced earlier this year that it would deregulate and decriminalize its provisions, reduce compliance burdens and attract more investment. revised as a purpose. In making these amendments, India’s commitment to the 2010 Nagoya Protocol, which calls for biodiversity access and benefit-sharing mechanisms at national and international levels, was cited.
Under the 2002 law, the NBA was mandated to approve the research and commercial use of local biological resources by foreign companies and regulate the patenting of traditional plant-based products. All domestic and international companies were required to share the profits from their final products with the local communities where their knowledge and raw materials originated. A 2018 judgment of the Uttarakhand High Court sought to regularize this profit-sharing mechanism by providing for 0.1-0.5% of profits to be shared with the community. The offense under the Act was clear.
The Biodiversity (Amendment) Act, 2023, currently in force, simplifies the requirement that locally controlled Indian companies with foreign shares are not treated as foreign companies. Indian nationals or entities do not have to go through a lengthy transaction process with the NBA. All you need to do is register yourself before getting approved. Indians accessing biological resources for commercial exploitation of intellectual property rights only need to notify the state biodiversity commission in advance and seek approval from the NBA. Penalties have been changed, including increasing the amount of penalties and omitting prison sentences for violations. Earlier, the fine was 100,000 rupees, but the fine has been increased to 5 million rupees.If the amount of damages exceeds this amount, the penalty is up to
1 billion rupees. Adjudication officials will conduct investigations to impose penalties, and aggrieved parties can appeal to the National Green Tribunal.
While the simplification of procedures is welcome, this amendment weakens the biodiversity enforcement and conservation regime enshrined in the original law. The patenting process for products derived from biological resources has been deregulated. Profit-sharing requirements for researchers and practitioners of Indian traditional medicine and products using cultivated plants containing traditional knowledge codified under the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, 1940 have been abolished. Abolishing prison sentences will likely encourage the plundering of biological resources, and paying fines will likely normalize such activities. This also facilitates biopiracy, as most infringers are commercial establishments rather than local communities.
These amendments may also affect transparency in the use of biodiversity. Communities will be deprived of the economic benefits they previously legally enjoyed for most products regulated by the original law, including Ayurvedic medicines that have their roots in codified traditional knowledge. become. These amendments are presumed to have been made to reverse a 2018 profit-sharing ruling that granted the State Biodiversity Board’s authority to regulate access by industry. The Nagoya Protocol requires access to be prohibited without prior informed consent or approval and requires access to indigenous peoples and local communities, i.e. those who are custodians of local genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. involvement is ignored.
This amendment takes away the original purpose of protecting and sustaining the use of biodiversity through community participation and engagement. They are bent on marketing biodiversity advances and their products without ensuring sustainability and benefits to the local people who depend on them and their products. It will impact biodiversity, forestry regulations and legislation, including global action and debate on climate change, food security and public health.
These amendments come after an assessment of the global biodiversity status and threats by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019. IPBES has warned that around 1 million of the 8 million species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction. They are on the verge of extinction, and approximately 75% of the Earth’s surface and 66% of the oceans have been significantly altered. This was a wake-up call to reduce human interference and fine-tune, balance and maintain the use of biodiversity and its products.
These amendments to the Biodiversity Act, in addition to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, change the conservation management regime and decriminalize provisions that have supported the effective protection of forests. may have an impact. Similarly, the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 was amended to be more pro-business rather than aggressively protectionist. Forests and biodiversity, consisting of diverse species of plants and animals, play a key role in providing goods and services, including life-giving eco-services such as fresh air, clean water and a stable supply of other natural resources. . They will now be affected. The objective would have been achieved if the focus had been on sustainable use of biodiversity and forests by increasing productivity and improving the livelihoods of local communities. Strangely, that doesn’t appear much in this revision.
These changes will inevitably lead to a decrease in forest area, degradation of forests, biodiversity and other ecosystems, and a reduction in the ecosystem services they provide. These measures include the provision of constitutional Directive Principles, national and state policies on forests, wildlife and biodiversity, and most importantly, the country’s commitment to international organizations such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. It’s also a violation of the promise I made. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
#environment