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The 16th National Meet of State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils was held in Chandigarh on 6-7 September 2026, organised by the National Biodiversity Authority.
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav inaugurated it alongside Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria and Haryana Environment Minister Rao Narbir Singh.
The central call was to make India's more than 2.76 lakh Biodiversity Management Committees functional and effective at the local level.
Sessions covered Access and Benefit Sharing, capacity building, People's Biodiversity Registers and ecosystem conservation.
India has submitted its 7th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its 1st National Report under the Nagoya Protocol.
India's parent biodiversity statute. It created the three-tier structure — the National Biodiversity Authority at the Centre, State Biodiversity Boards in the States and Biodiversity Management Committees at the local body level — and governs access to biological resources and associated traditional knowledge.
Amended the 2002 Act to ease compliance for cultivated medicinal plants, AYUSH practitioners and registered users, converted offences into civil penalties, and reshaped the approval route for access and benefit sharing.
The operative rules made under the amended Act; they set out the current procedure for access, benefit sharing and compliance and, with the 2023 Act, form the framework the National Meet works within.
The multilateral treaty India is a Party to, adopted in 1992 and in force from 1993, with three objectives: conservation of biological diversity, its sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources.
A protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity on access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their utilisation. It is the international source of India's ABS obligations.
Statutory and autonomous body under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002; regulates access to India's biological resources by foreign entities, advises the Central Government and coordinates the SBBs and UTBCs. It organised this National Meet.
Regulate access by Indian entities within a State, advise the State Government and oversee the Biodiversity Management Committees below them.
Perform the State Biodiversity Board function in Union Territories, which do not have separate Boards.
The local tier, constituted by panchayats, municipalities and municipal corporations. They prepare People's Biodiversity Registers and act on conservation, sustainable use and documentation of traditional knowledge.
A document prepared by a Biodiversity Management Committee recording local plants, animals, landraces and the traditional knowledge attached to them. It is the legal evidence of what a community holds, and the basis on which benefit-sharing money can later be routed back to it.
Simple Analogy: A village's own inventory register of its living wealth.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Conservation, biodiversity legislation and institutions
General Awareness > Environment and statutory bodies
Consider the following statements: 1. In India, the Biodiversity Management Committees are key to the realization of the objectives of the Nagoya Protocol. 2. The Biodiversity Management Committees have important functions in determining access and benefit sharing, including the power to levy collection fees on the access of biological resources within its jurisdiction. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: Both 1 and 2
The requirement that users of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge share a fair part of the resulting benefits with the communities or authorities that conserved them.
The local-body tier of India's biodiversity governance under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, responsible for the People's Biodiversity Register.
A 2010 supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity governing access to genetic resources and benefit sharing.