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The National Biodiversity Authority has released ₹15.52 crore in Access and Benefit Sharing proceeds received from M/s Pioneer Overseas Corporation, which developed ten commercial mustard (Brassica juncea) hybrid varieties using India's biological resources.
The amount flows to 26 State Biodiversity Boards and 3 Union Territory Biodiversity Councils, with each share calculated on the area under mustard cultivation in that state.
Because the parental lines were sourced from the open market and traders, no single farmer or community could be identified as the source, so the NBA constituted an Expert Committee to devise modalities for disbursal in such cases.
The approved modality is that where biological resources are accessed from intermediaries, benefit sharing goes to the State Biodiversity Boards and UT Biodiversity Councils where the resource is cultivated.
Cultivation-area figures were sourced from ICAR-Indian Institute of Rapeseed-Mustard Research, Bharatpur; Rajasthan, with nearly 42% of India's mustard cultivation, receives the largest share, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
The Convention on Biological Diversity established sovereign rights of states over their biological resources and made fair and equitable benefit sharing one of its three objectives, operationalised by the Nagoya Protocol, adopted at Nagoya, Japan on 29 October 2010 and in force from 12 October 2014. India gave effect to this through the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, under which a company using Indian biological resources for commercial utilisation must obtain approval from the National Biodiversity Authority and share benefits. The normal design assumes a traceable source: a specific community that conserved a landrace, whose Biodiversity Management Committee receives the benefit. This case broke that assumption. Pioneer Overseas Corporation bred its ten mustard hybrids in-house, but the parental lines came from the open market and from traders, so no farmer or community could be identified as the conserver. The Expert Committee's answer was to shift the unit of entitlement from the source community to the cultivating geography: where resources are accessed through intermediaries, benefits go to the State Biodiversity Boards and UT Biodiversity Councils in whose territory the resource is grown, apportioned by cultivated area. That is why Rajasthan, with roughly 42% of India's mustard area, receives the most — not because the parental lines came from there, but because that is where the resource is cultivated.
Simple Analogy: If royalties are owed to whoever preserved a recipe but the cook bought the ingredients from a market stall, you cannot trace one family — so you pay the regions that have kept growing the ingredient.
India's framework legislation for conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits from biological resources and associated traditional knowledge. It created the three-tier structure of the National Biodiversity Authority, State Biodiversity Boards and Biodiversity Management Committees.
Notified on 3 August 2023, it narrowed the categories requiring prior NBA approval, removed the requirement of prior approval for obtaining intellectual property rights for entities covered under Section 7 while requiring registration with the NBA before an IPR is granted, and decriminalised violations of the Act, replacing criminal penalties with monetary ones.
The protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, adopted at Nagoya on 29 October 2010 and in force from 12 October 2014 — the international instrument the Indian ABS regime implements.
Regulates access to India's biological resources for commercial utilisation and research, determines benefit-sharing terms, and performs facilitative and advisory functions for the Government of India — the body that collected and has now disbursed these proceeds
The state-level tier, regulating access by Indian entities within the state and receiving benefit-sharing proceeds — 26 SBBs and 3 UTBCs receive shares in this case
The local tier, constituted by every local body to promote conservation, sustainable use and documentation of biological diversity; their principal task is preparing the People's Biodiversity Register in consultation with local people
Supplied the state-wise mustard cultivation-area figures on which the apportionment was calculated
The CBD's three objectives — conservation, sustainable use and fair and equitable benefit sharing — map directly onto the Biological Diversity Act's title and structure.
The register prepared by each Biodiversity Management Committee is the documentation that would normally allow a resource to be traced to a community — its absence in this case is precisely why the Expert Committee had to devise an alternative modality.
ABS is the legal answer to biopiracy cases such as the turmeric and neem patents, where Indian resources and knowledge were commercialised abroad without benefit sharing.
Mustard is among India's principal oilseeds, with Rajasthan dominating cultivation — linking a biodiversity law question to edible oil self-sufficiency.
GS Paper 3 > Conservation and Biodiversity; Environmental Legislation and International Conventions
General Awareness > Environment and Acts
General Awareness > Current Affairs
The Biological Diversity Act, the NBA and the Nagoya Protocol recur in Prelims and in GS3 environment answers
The requirement that benefits from commercial use of biological resources be shared fairly with those who conserved them, administered in India by the NBA.
Indian mustard, the species whose hybrids generated these ABS proceeds.
The documentation of local biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge prepared by a Biodiversity Management Committee in consultation with local people.
The CBD protocol on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, adopted 29 October 2010 and in force 12 October 2014.
Biological resources obtained from the open market or traders rather than from an identifiable community — the situation for which this new disbursal modality was created.