Examine the institutional architecture of biodiversity governance in India — NBA, SBBs and BMCs. How effective has fiscal devolution under the ABS mechanism been in strengthening grassroots conservation?

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002, enacted to fulfil India's obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity, builds a three-tier regulatory structure [1]. Its Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism has moved real money downward, but the last mile remains the weak link.

The three-tier architecture

• National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) — statutory body under MoEFCC, headquartered at Chennai; regulates access by foreign entities, IPR applications on Indian bio-resources, and determines benefit-sharing terms [1][2].
• State Biodiversity Boards / UT Biodiversity Councils — regulate commercial utilisation by Indian entities and act as the conduit for ABS funds to claimers [1][2].
• Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at every local body — the grassroots tier, mandated to prepare People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) documenting local resources and traditional knowledge [1].

Fiscal devolution: what has worked

• NBA transfers 85–90% of ABS proceeds to the concerned SBB for onward disbursal to benefit claimers — a genuine fiscal-federal channel within environmental governance [2].
• India's ABS framework has delivered around ₹145 crore to beneficiaries, with ₹21.26 crore realised in FY 2025-26 alone [3][4].
• ₹6.09 crore was extended to SBBs/UTBCs in FY 2025-26 for PBR improvement, medicinal plant parks, gene banks and tribal livelihoods [2]; ₹3.79 crore went to 33 States/UTs and national institutes [5], rewarding conserving institutions such as ICAR research bodies.

Persisting gaps

• Flows reaching the lowest tier stay thin — only ₹45.05 lakh to BMCs across 10 States and two UTs in a comparable release [6].
• NBA itself has shifted policy focus from mere constitution of BMCs to their functionality and PBR quality, conceding that paper committees dominate [2].
• The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 exempted registered AYUSH practitioners and cultivated medicinal plants from benefit-sharing, narrowing the revenue base [7].

ABS has proved that conservation can be self-financing, converting biopiracy risk into community entitlement. Strengthening BMC capacity, digitising PBRs and time-bound disbursal would carry this success to the village level, aligning India with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Article 48A's conservation mandate.