MoEFCC and the National Biodiversity Authority have launched a five-year project to strengthen biodiversity governance in Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya. The initiative focuses on empowering Biodiversity Management Committees at the grassroots level, improving People's Biodiversity Registers, and ensuring fair access and benefit-sharing under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The project aims to operationalise local-level biodiversity institutions that have existed on paper but remained largely inactive across many states.

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 created a three-tier institutional structure for biodiversity governance in India: 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 mandated to prepare People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) — living documents that record local biological resources, their uses, and associated traditional knowledge.

Despite being legally mandated, BMCs across India have struggled with weak capacity, poor funding, and limited awareness. This five-year project directly addresses that gap by targeting two ecologically significant states: Tamil Nadu (part of the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot) and Meghalaya (part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot and home to significant community-conserved areas).

The Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism under the Act is central here. When commercial entities access biological resources or associated traditional knowledge, they must share benefits with local communities through BMCs. This project aims to make that pipeline functional at the ground level.

The Nagoya Protocol on ABS under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the international framework India is implementing domestically through the Biological Diversity Act. India ratified the Nagoya Protocol in 2012. The nodal ministry for biodiversity is MoEFCC, and the NBA is headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu — making Tamil Nadu's inclusion particularly significant.