MoEFCC and the National Biodiversity Authority have jointly launched a five-year project to strengthen grassroots biodiversity governance in Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya. The project focuses on empowering Biodiversity Management Committees at the local level, improving People's Biodiversity Registers, and aligning India's community-level biodiversity framework with its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya were selected as pilot states for this decentralised conservation initiative.

India's biodiversity governance rests on a three-tier institutional structure created by the Biological Diversity Act, 2002: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the central level, State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) at the state level, and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local body level. BMCs are the critical grassroots layer — they are mandated to prepare and maintain People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs), which document local biological resources, traditional knowledge, and their uses. Despite being legally required, PBR quality and BMC functionality have historically been uneven across states.

This five-year project directly targets that gap. By choosing Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya as pilots, the project addresses two contrasting ecological contexts: Tamil Nadu's rich coastal and forest biodiversity and Meghalaya's community-governed forests (a state with significant community forest resource rights). The project also connects to India's commitments under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (adopted at CBD COP15 in 2022), which set the 30x30 target — protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030.

For exam purposes, the key institutional relationships to fix are: NBA is the nodal body under MoEFCC; the Biological Diversity Act 2002 governs this architecture; and PBRs are the instruments through which benefit-sharing, access, and conservation decisions flow at the community level. BMCs also have a role in granting approval for local use of biological resources — a function examiners frequently test as a source of distractor confusion with NBA and SBB powers.