Take a look at the essential concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up your knowledge. Here’s your knowledge nugget on India’s efforts to implement the Nagoya Protocol today.

(Relevance: Questions have been directly asked on the Nagoya protocol in the UPSC Prelims. Since India has submitted its first National Report, it has become important to comprehensively understand this topic and efforts made at the international level.)

Recently, India has submitted the First National Report (NR1) on the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS). The report was submitted on 27th February 2026, by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), in collaboration with the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). It is in accordance with Article 29 of the Protocol on Monitoring and Reporting.

1. The report covers the period from 1 November 2017 to 31 December of last year. It highlights the country’s progress in implementing the Nagoya Protocol while contributing to Target 13 of India’s updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP).

2. According to the report, India implements the Access and Benefit-Sharing mechanism through a three-tier institutional framework comprising the NBA, State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) or Union Territory Biodiversity Councils (UTBCs) at the sub-national level; and the Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local level, constituted by elected local bodies. This decentralised system has enabled coordinated action at national, state, and local levels.

3. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) came out of the same 1992 Rio Earth Summit that gave rise to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). CBD aims to protect global biodiversity, restore natural ecosystems, and ensure that benefits from the world’s biological resources are equitably distributed.

4. Countries, including India, had agreed to a Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1994. There was a general agreement on three things:

(i) that indiscriminate use of biological resources needs to be halted,

(ii) that sustainable use of these resources, for their medicinal properties, for example, needed to be regulated,

(iii) that people and communities helping in protecting and maintaining these resources needed to be rewarded for their efforts.

5. The CBD is not just about the conservation and restoration of ecosystems. It is also about the sustainable use of natural resources and equitable sharing of benefits from the use of these resources. For example, if a European pharmaceutical company wants to make use of some medicinal properties of plants grown in Tamil Nadu, the benefits of such use, monetary or otherwise, must be equitably shared among all stakeholders, including the indigenous populations that are custodians of that specific biological resource.

6. The CBD has given rise to two ‘supplementary’ agreements — the Cartagena Protocol of 2003 and the Nagoya Protocol of 2014. Both agreements take their names from the places where they were negotiated.

7. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety seeks to protect biodiversity from genetically modified organisms by ensuring their safe handling, transport and use. Genetically modified crops, for example, can interfere with natural ecosystems in ways that might not yet be fully understood. That is the reason why GM crops are cultivated on segregated farms.

8. The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing deals with the commercial utilisation of biological and genetic resources, for example, by pharma companies. It asks the host countries to provide access to its genetic resources in a legal, fair and non-arbitrary manner and, as mentioned above, offers them a fair and equitable share of benefits arising out of the utilisation of those resources. It lays down the general principles of the rights and claims of countries on their bio-resources and rules for their commercial utilisation.

9. Under this mechanism, biodiversity-rich countries needed to provide access to their biological resources to those wanting to use them for research or commercial reasons, and the user agencies, in turn, were mandated to share the benefits of their use with the local communities. This access and benefit-sharing works at both the domestic and the international levels.

10. Signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a 1993 agreement, meet every two years — not annually like the climate meetings — to work on a global plan to halt biodiversity loss and restore natural ecosystems. Outcomes of CBD’s COPs:

* COP 17: It is scheduled to be held in Yerevan, Armenia from 19–30 October 2026.

* COP 16: It was held in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November 2024.The Conference ended with the establishment of the Cali Fund for Digital Sequence Information (DSI), aimed  for equitable sharing, especially with Indigenous and local communities. It also aimed to secure USD 200 billion per year by 2030 to fund biodiversity initiatives globally.

* COP 15: It was held in Montreal, Canada in 2022. It delivered a new agreement called the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which contains four goals and 23 targets that need to be achieved by 2030. The GBF is being compared to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change that is guiding global climate action.

1. India has both constitutional and statutory provisions for biodiversity conservation. The Constitution provides directives to the state and imposes fundamental duties on citizens.

Article 48-A (Directive Principles of State Policy) directs the state to protect and improve the environment and safeguard forests and wildlife.

Article 51-A(g) (Fundamental Duties) imposes a duty on every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment and to have compassion for living creatures.

2. In addition to constitutional directives, there are statutory provisions for biodiversity protection and conservation: the Fisheries Act, 1897, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

3. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 was born out of India’s attempt to realise the objectives enshrined in the United Nations CBD, 1992, which India ratified in 1994. The key objectives of the Act are – the conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of its resources, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources, through a just process.

4. Similarly, the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) 1999 (later updated in 2008) was formulated to implement the CBD mandates. In 2014, amendments were made to align the plan with the Aichi Biodiversity targets, adopted at CBD COP 10 at Nagoya, 2010.

5. Building on this, India further launched the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) 2024-2030 at COP 16 in Cali, Colombia, to align it with the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework adopted at COP 15, which replaces the Aichi targets. It sets 23 national Biodiversity targets to guide conservation efforts through 2030.

Consider the following statements : (UPSC CSE 2023)

1. In India, the Biodiversity Management Committees are key to the realisation of the objectives of the Nagoya Protocol.

2. The Biodiversity Management Committees have important functions in determining access benefit sharing, including the power to levy collection fees on the access of biological resources within its jurisdiction.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 only

(b) 2 only

(c) Both 1 and 2

(d) Neither 1 nor 2

(Sources: Biodiversity COP16: What is it, what is on agenda this year, What is the COP15 Biodiversity Commitment, delivered at Montreal?, Biodiversity under threat, what we need to do, cbd.int)

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