NABARD Grade A Current Affairs — 16 August 2026

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the National Biodiversity Authority have jointly launched a five-year project to strengthen biodiversity governance at the grassroots level, focusing on Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya. The initiative targets the functioning of Biodiversity Management Committees at the local level, which are mandated under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The project aims to improve documentation of biological resources and support access and benefit-sharing frameworks under national and international biodiversity obligations.

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 is India's legislative response to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which India ratified in 1994. The Act creates a three-tier governance structure: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the national level, State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) at the state level, and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local body level. BMCs are the operational backbone of this system — they are responsible for preparing People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), which document local biological resources, traditional knowledge, and cultivation practices.

The Nagoya Protocol (2010), under the CBD, governs Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) — meaning that any commercial or research use of India's biological resources must share benefits with local communities who hold traditional knowledge. BMCs are the first point of enforcement for ABS claims at the ground level.

Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya are strategically significant: Tamil Nadu falls within the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats biodiversity hotspots, while Meghalaya is part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot — one of the 36 recognised global hotspots. Both states have high biological diversity and substantial indigenous community knowledge.

The five-year project timeline also aligns with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF, 2022), which set the '30x30' target — protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030. Strengthening grassroots BMCs directly supports India's national biodiversity targets under this framework.

UN biodiversity talks confirm the world is falling short of its Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets set for 2030. Negotiators at the latest CBD subsidiary body meeting advanced recommendations on protected areas, wildlife management, and biodiversity finance, but disagreements over accelerating implementation remain unresolved. With COP17 approaching, the gap between national commitments and actual biodiversity action mirrors the earlier Aichi Target failures, raising urgent questions about enforcement, finance mobilisation, and equitable burden-sharing among nations.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted at CBD COP15 in December 2022 in Montreal, is the successor to the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its 20 Aichi Targets — all of which were missed. KMGBF contains 23 action-oriented targets for 2030 and four overarching goals for 2050, under the vision of 'Living in harmony with nature by 2050.'

The most headline-grabbing is Target 3, the '30x30' commitment: protecting at least 30% of the world's land, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans by 2030. Currently, roughly 17% of land and 8% of oceans are formally protected, making the gap substantial.

Target 19 addresses finance, requiring mobilisation of at least $200 billion per year for biodiversity from all sources by 2030, with developed countries providing $20 billion per year to developing nations by 2025, rising to $30 billion by 2030. The Cali Fund (established at COP16, 2024) operationalises benefit-sharing from digital sequence information on genetic resources.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the governing treaty, with the Secretariat based in Montreal. India is a Party; the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) is the nodal ministry. India's Biodiversity Act 2002 and National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) are the domestic implementation tools. The current shortfall echoes the Aichi failure and puts pressure on NBSAPs (National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans) to be more ambitious and funded.