NABARD Grade A Current Affairs — 31 August 2026

Bangladesh is preparing an updated National Red List after confirming 31 wildlife species have gone extinct within the country. The new assessment covers 1,619 species across vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants — significantly expanding the previous list. The exercise follows IUCN Red List criteria and is coordinated by the Forest Department under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The update will inform national biodiversity conservation targets aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022.

A National Red List applies IUCN's globally standardised categories — Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, Least Concern, and Data Deficient — to species within a specific country's borders. This is distinct from the global IUCN Red List: a species can be nationally extinct while surviving elsewhere, making national red lists critical for domestic conservation policy.

The IUCN Red List uses five quantitative criteria (A through E) covering population decline rate, geographic range, population size, quantitative analysis, and probability of extinction. A species qualifies as Critically Endangered if its population has declined by ≥80% over 10 years or three generations.

Bangladesh's exercise is significant because it feeds into National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which are mandatory under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The Kunming-Montreal GBF's Target 2 calls for halting human-induced extinction of known threatened species by 2030. The '31 extinct species' figure is the kind of precise number examiners blank out in MCQs.

For India, the parallel machinery is the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), operating under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). India's own Red List assessments feed into Project Tiger, Project Elephant, and the Species Recovery Programme under the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats scheme.

India restored 21.76 million hectares of degraded land between 2011 and 2020, generating 1.22 billion person-days of employment in the process. The data, released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, aligns with India's Land Degradation Neutrality commitment under the UNCCD. India has pledged to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 under its updated Nationally Determined Contribution and its Bonn Challenge commitment, contributing to both climate mitigation and rural livelihood goals.

Land degradation neutrality (LDN) is a state where the amount and quality of land resources remains stable or increases within a specified ecosystem and time period. It is operationalised under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), to which India is a party. India submitted its voluntary LDN target as part of its broader NDC commitments under the Paris Agreement.

India's restoration target of 26 million hectares by 2030 is also linked to the Bonn Challenge — a global effort launched in 2011 to restore 150 million hectares by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. India pledged 21 million hectares under the Bonn Challenge and later raised its ambition.

The 21.76 million hectares restored between 2011 and 2020 demonstrates significant progress. Key programmes driving this include the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), now subsumed under Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) – Watershed Development Component, MGNREGS (which explains the massive employment generation figure), and the Green India Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

The employment co-benefit — 1.22 billion person-days — is significant because it quantifies land restoration as a rural livelihood intervention, not merely an ecological one. This dual dividend (ecological restoration + employment) is central to India's argument that climate action and development are complementary, not competing, goals. NABARD finances watershed and land restoration projects through its Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) and climate finance windows.

On World Wildlife Day (March 3), PM Modi highlighted India's conservation milestones, including over 800 tigers added in a decade, bringing the population to more than 3,600. India now hosts 58 tiger reserves under Project Tiger, 34 elephant reserves under Project Elephant, and ranks among the few nations where major wildlife populations are growing. The day, designated by the UN in 2013, commemorates CITES signing in 1973.

World Wildlife Day is observed on March 3 every year — the date on which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was adopted in 1973. The UN General Assembly designated this observance in December 2013 (Resolution 68/205). The nodal ministry for wildlife conservation in India is the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).

India's wildlife conservation architecture rests on several pillars. Project Tiger, launched in 1973, is administered by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The latest tiger census (2022) counted 3,682 tigers — approximately 75% of the global wild tiger population — making India the country with the largest tiger population in the world. There are currently 58 tiger reserves spanning roughly 78,135 sq km.

Project Elephant was launched in 1992 and covers 34 elephant reserves. India also has a robust network of protected areas: 106 national parks, 573 wildlife sanctuaries, 97 conservation reserves, and 127 community reserves (numbers vary slightly by latest MoEFCC notification).

The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 provides the legal backbone, classifying species into six schedules (amended to four schedules post-2022 amendment). CITES regulates cross-border trade in endangered species through three appendices: Appendix I (trade prohibited), Appendix II (regulated trade), and Appendix III (country-specific protection). India is a CITES signatory and the COP19 of CITES was held in Panama in 2022.

The e-Shram portal, launched in August 2021 by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, completed five years of operation in 2026. It has registered over 300 million unorganised sector workers, assigning each a Universal Account Number linked to Aadhaar. The portal serves as India's first centralised national database of unorganised workers, enabling direct benefit transfers and scheme convergence for construction labourers, domestic workers, migrant workers, street vendors, and gig workers across all states.

e-Shram addresses a foundational governance problem: India's unorganised sector employs roughly 90% of the workforce, yet these workers were invisible to the state — no registry, no portability of benefits, no identity in the social protection architecture. The portal solves this by creating a Universal Account Number (UAN) seeded with Aadhaar, mobile number, and bank account, making each worker uniquely identifiable and directly reachable for welfare delivery.

The economic delivery mechanism is critical for exam purposes. Once registered, workers can access PM Suraksha Bima Yojana (accidental insurance of ₹2 lakh), are mapped for PM Shram Yogi Maandhan (pension scheme for unorganised workers), and become eligible for priority delivery under other centrally sponsored schemes. The portal enables scheme convergence — a single registration unlocking multiple entitlements — which is the model the government is scaling through the Jan Samarth and UMANG platforms.

For NABARD aspirants, the rural credit angle is significant: a large share of registrants are agricultural labourers and rural migrants. Formalising their identity could eventually improve credit access by providing verifiable income and employment history — a step toward priority sector lending inclusion. For UPSC aspirants, e-Shram exemplifies the shift from scheme-centric to beneficiary-centric governance, where the database precedes and enables welfare, rather than welfare being delivered scheme by scheme without a beneficiary registry.