NABARD Grade A Current Affairs — 19 August 2026

MoEFCC and the National Biodiversity Authority have launched a five-year project to strengthen biodiversity governance at the grassroots level, with Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya as the pilot states. The initiative focuses on empowering Biodiversity Management Committees at the local level, improving People's Biodiversity Registers, and reinforcing the Access and Benefit Sharing framework under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The project aims to operationalise India's commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at COP15.

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) is a statutory body established under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, headquartered in Chennai. It implements India's obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The three-tier structure created by the Act places 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 mandated to prepare People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) — comprehensive records of local biological resources, their medicinal or commercial uses, and knowledge associated with them. PBRs serve as the documentary foundation for the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism, ensuring that communities receive a fair share when their biological resources or associated traditional knowledge are commercially exploited.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), adopted at CBD COP15 in December 2022 in Montreal, set the landmark 30x30 target — protecting 30% of the world's land and oceans by 2030. India's domestic implementation of GBF commitments runs through the NBA–MoEFCC machinery, making this five-year project a direct operationalisation of that global pledge.

Choosing Tamil Nadu (biodiversity-rich Western Ghats hotspot) and Meghalaya (Indo-Burma hotspot) as pilots is significant — both states are within globally recognised biodiversity hotspots, making their governance frameworks test cases for scaling the model nationally.

On India's 80th Independence Day, the Gujarat Forest Department and Vantara jointly released 20 blackbucks into the Banni Grasslands of Kutch district. The initiative aims to restore native herbivore populations in one of Asia's largest tropical grasslands, which had lost blackbucks due to historical hunting and habitat pressure. Banni, a UNESCO-recognised biosphere buffer zone, supports pastoral communities and migratory birds. The rewilding is part of a broader ecological restoration strategy for Gujarat's grassland ecosystems.

Rewilding is a conservation strategy that reintroduces native species to restore ecological balance and self-sustaining ecosystems. In the blackbuck-Banni case, several exam-relevant threads converge.

Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) is India's fastest land animal and is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List — but was once decimated by poaching and is protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, giving it the highest legal protection alongside tigers and elephants. Schedule I listing means even possession is a cognisable offence — a favourite exam distinction.

Banni Grasslands in Kutch, Gujarat, span roughly 2,500 sq km, making them Asia's largest tropical grassland. They support the Maldhari pastoral community and serve as critical habitat for the Indian Wild Ass (khur) in the adjacent Wild Ass Sanctuary. Banni is a Ramsar-adjacent wetland system where seasonal flooding creates a mosaic of grassland and wetland — a point that connects biodiversity and wetland conventions simultaneously.

Rewilding differs from translocation in intent: translocation moves animals for population management; rewilding aims to restore a species' ecological function (here, grazing pressure that maintains grassland structure). The examiner distinguishes these.

Nodal ministry for wildlife: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, typically provides the scientific backbone for such reintroduction programmes in India.