“Communities need more benefits for conservation”

V B MATHUR, CHAIRPERSON OF THE NATIONAL BIODIVERSITY AUTHORITY, CHENNAI, TALKS TO ABHILASH KHANDEKAR ON THE COMING OF AGE OF THE COUNTRY’S BIODIVERSITY GOVERNANCE. EXCERPTS

- ABHILASH KHANDEKAR

How has the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, shaped up over the past 18 years. Has it been implemented in letter and spirit?

Considering the importance of biodiversity for human wellbeing and development, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio, Brazil, in 1992, adopted the Convention on Biological Diversity. India became a party to the convention in 1994 and in pursuance of it enacted the Biological Diversity Act (BDA) in 2002. Its rules were enacted in 2004 through an extensive consultative process initiated in 1994. Hence, the processes and the timeline go much beyond 2002.

The Act is implemented through a three-tier institutional mechanism: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) set up by the Centre, state biodiversity boards (SBBs) set up by state governments and biodiversity management committees (BMCs) set up by the elected bodies at the local level. As per the provisions of the Act, all the three institutions are autonomous and statutory bodies.

SBBs have been established in all 28 states; 26 of them have notified rules in accordance with the provisions of the Act. NBA has recently empowered Union Territories (UTs) to establish the biodiversity councils similar to SBBs as part of the decentralisation process. Now, as many as 18 states and two UTs have also notified a list of threatened species of plants and animals, whereas 11 states have notified 18 biodiversity heritage sites.