The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) have launched a five-year project to strengthen grassroots biodiversity governance in Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya. The initiative focuses on operationalising Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local level, enhancing People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The project aims to integrate traditional knowledge into formal conservation frameworks.

India's biodiversity governance architecture rests on a three-tier structure established by the Biological Diversity Act, 2002: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the apex, State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) at the state level, and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local body level. Despite this statutory framework, BMCs have remained largely dormant in most states, with People's Biodiversity Registers — the grassroots documentation tool for local biological resources and traditional knowledge — either incomplete or not updated.

This five-year project directly addresses that implementation gap. Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya are chosen as pilot states for different reasons: Tamil Nadu has high biodiversity hotspot density (Western Ghats) and a relatively active SBB, while Meghalaya represents the Northeast, a global biodiversity hotspot with unique community-based forest governance traditions like the Sacred Groves (Law Kyntang).

The deeper significance is about Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). Under the Nagoya Protocol — to which India is a Party — and the Biological Diversity Act, any commercial or research use of India's biological resources must involve fair benefit-sharing with local communities. BMCs are the front-line institutions that negotiate and monitor this. Strengthening them directly improves India's compliance with Nagoya Protocol obligations and supports the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, including the 30x30 goal. For NABARD, this matters because biodiversity governance intersects with watershed development, tribal livelihoods, and NABARD-financed Green Infrastructure projects in the Northeast and Western Ghats.