NBA Disburses Rs 2.02 Crore of ABS Funds from Seed Sector to Support Biodiversity Conservation and Community Well-Being at Grassroots Level

1. At a Glance

• The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) has given out Rs 2.02 crore of Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) money to 27 State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) and 3 Union Territory Biodiversity Councils (UTBCs). The money came from seed-sector companies that used Indian agricultural biological resources. [1]
• Most buyers got these resources through markets or traders, so the individual people owed a share could not be identified. In such cases the NBA shared the money out by cultivation area of each crop in each State, using an expert committee's method. [1]
• It shows how India applies the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, its NBSAP 2024–2030, and Targets 13 and 19 of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). [1]
• For UPSC, it links GS-III (biodiversity, IPR and biopiracy, conservation finance), GS-II (federal institutions, international agreements) and Prelims (CBD, Nagoya Protocol, KMGBF targets).

2. Why in the News

• 10 Oct 2026: PIB announced the Rs 2.02 crore disbursement to 27 SBBs and 3 UTBCs. [1]
• With this release, the NBA's cumulative ABS disbursement reached Rs 202.00 crore. [1]
• It came just before CBD COP 17, which starts on 19 Oct 2026 in Yerevan, Armenia. [1]

3. Background & Evolution

• Global origin: the Nagoya Protocol on ABS was adopted at CBD COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan, on 29 Oct 2010. It entered into force on 12 Oct 2014, 90 days after the 50th ratification. [9]
• Domestic law: the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 set up the ABS mechanism. Its job is to share the benefits of using biological resources fairly with local communities, Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs), farmers and holders of traditional knowledge. [3]
• Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023: passed by the Lok Sabha on 25 Jul 2023 and the Rajya Sabha on 1 Aug 2023. It strengthened and clarified the rules on access to biological resources and associated traditional knowledge. [2]
• Dec 2022 (COP 15): the KMGBF was adopted. Target 13 covers sharing benefits from genetic resources, Digital Sequence Information (DSI) and associated traditional knowledge. [10]
• COP 16 (Cali): Parties set up a multilateral benefit-sharing mechanism for DSI, with a global fund called the Cali Fund. [11]
• Earlier NBA ABS releases (from PIB headlines):
• Rs 82 lakh for Red Sanders conservation in Andhra Pradesh [6]
• Rs 67 lakh to the Dapur BMC, Maharashtra [7]
• About Rs 3.79 crore to 33 States/UTs and national institutes [4]

4. Core Static Facts

Uses of ABS money [1]:

• Strengthening BMCs
• Updating People's Biodiversity Registers (PBRs)
• Conserving traditional crop varieties and medicinal plants
• Restoring habitats

Schemes it can work alongside [1]:

• PM-JANMAN
• Pradhan Mantri Janjatiya Vikas Mission
• PM Van Dhan Yojana

SDGs linked [1]: 2, 8, 12, 15 and 17.

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Economic

• ABS is a way to raise money for conservation from companies that commercially use biological resources. [1]
• The amounts are small next to the size of the seed industry. Rs 2.02 crore across 30 States/UTs is modest, and cumulative realisation is in the low hundreds of crores. [1][3]
• Linking with Van Dhan and similar schemes could channel the money into nature-based livelihoods. [1]

Social / Tribal

• The money is meant to reach local communities, farmers and holders of traditional knowledge through BMCs. [3]
• Tribal-welfare schemes (PM-JANMAN, PMJVM) are named explicitly as areas of convergence. [1]

Environmental

• The money is reinvested in on-farm conservation of traditional crop varieties, medicinal plants and habitat restoration. [1]
• The model has also been used for single species, such as Red Sanders in Andhra Pradesh. [6]

Administrative / Federal

• The area-based formula solves a real problem: when crops are bought through markets or traders, no individual benefit claimer can be identified. [1]
• Trade-off: the formula benefits large-acreage States such as MP and West Bengal. It does not necessarily benefit the communities that actually conserved the specific landraces.
• The usefulness of the money depends on how well SBBs and BMCs can absorb and spend it, and on PBRs being kept up to date. [1]

Legal / Governance

• The scheme rests on the 2002 Act and the 2023 Amendment. PIB credits the regulatory reforms with a surge in IPR filings. [2]
• Publishing State-wise shares improves transparency. [1]
• Monitoring what BMCs actually do with the money remains weak.

Geopolitical

• India uses its ABS record to show progress on KMGBF Targets 13 and 19 ahead of COP 17. [1]
• DSI is now the main area of dispute. The Cali Fund moves benefit-sharing beyond physical samples. [11]

6. Recent Developments (last 12–18 months)

• FY 2025–26: the NBA realised Rs 21.26 crore through ABS. [3]
• FY 2025–26: the NBA gave Rs 6.09 crore in financial support to SBBs and UTBCs. [5]
• A digital portal was launched to issue Certificates of Origin for cultivated medicinal plants. [8]
• About Rs 3.79 crore in ABS money went to 33 States/UTs and national institutes. [4]
• 10 Oct 2026: the Rs 2.02 crore seed-sector disbursement; the cumulative total reached Rs 202 crore. [1]
• 19 Oct 2026: COP 17 begins in Yerevan, Armenia. [1]
• Note: the retrieved snippets for S4–S8 did not show exact dates.

7. Prelims Hooks

• The NBA disbursed Rs 2.02 crore of seed-sector ABS money to 27 SBBs and 3 UTBCs in Oct 2026. [1]
• The largest share went to Madhya Pradesh, then West Bengal and Odisha. [1]
• For market-sourced resources, shares were divided by crop cultivation area using MoA&FW agricultural statistics. [1]
• The NBA's cumulative ABS disbursement reached Rs 202 crore (Oct 2026). [1]
• The NBA realised Rs 21.26 crore through ABS in FY 2025–26. [3]
• The Nagoya Protocol was adopted on 29 Oct 2010 at COP 10 and came into force on 12 Oct 2014. [9]
• The Nagoya Protocol came into force 90 days after the 50th ratification. [9]
• KMGBF Target 13 is about benefit-sharing from genetic resources, DSI and associated traditional knowledge. [10]
• KMGBF Target 19 is about resource mobilisation. [1]
• The Cali Fund is the global fund for sharing benefits from the use of DSI, set up at COP 16. [11]
• The BD (Amendment) Act, 2023 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 25 Jul 2023 and the Rajya Sabha on 1 Aug 2023. [2]
• CBD COP 17 is in Yerevan, Armenia, starting 19 Oct 2026. [1]
• India's current biodiversity plan is NBSAP 2024–2030. [1]
• ABS money supports updating People's Biodiversity Registers. [1]

8. Who Gets the Money, and Who the Formula Leaves Out

• The formula pays for land under a crop, not for the people who saved the seed
• The NBA divided the money by how much land each State grows rice, tomato, okra and the other crops on [1].
• But a seed company does not build a hybrid from "tomato in general". It uses particular old local varieties, called landraces, that particular farming communities kept alive.

• So a State with a large area of commercial tomato gets more, even if the useful landrace came from a small tribal district somewhere else.

• Most of the money goes to a few States

• The top 10 States got Rs 1.43 crore of the Rs 2.02 crore [1].
• The other 20 States/UTs shared about Rs 59 lakh, so roughly Rs 3 lakh each on average [1].

• Small hill and North-East States, which hold much of India's crop diversity, have small farm areas. An area formula pushes them towards the bottom of the list.

• The money stops at the State, not at the farmer

• The money goes to the 27 SBBs and 3 UTBCs (State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils) [1].
• They then spend it on BMCs, PBRs (People's Biodiversity Registers, the village record of local plants, animals and traditional knowledge) and conservation work [1].
• So no individual farmer or community gets a share by right. Any benefit reaches them only through spending by the State and local bodies.

9. The Best Argument for the Area Formula, and Where It Breaks

• The strongest defence
• The companies bought these crops through markets and traders. Nobody can trace a packet of seed back to one village [1].
• Without some formula, the money would sit unused in the NBA's accounts.

• Cultivation area comes from official Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare data, and the State-wise shares are published. That makes the split easy to check and hard to fix in someone's favour [1].

• What is right about it

• For widely grown crops like rice, area really does show roughly where the crop is grown and cared for. Paying out by area is better than paying nothing.

• Where it stops working

• Area measures how much is grown, not how much diversity is kept. A State with many hectares of one modern hybrid can score higher than a State that saves dozens of landraces.

• Villages already record landraces and folk varieties in their PBRs [12]. A formula that never looks at these records ignores the one tool built to find out who conserved what.

• A fair conclusion for an answer: the area formula is a reasonable fallback for untraceable market purchases. It should not become the default for every case.

10. Money Collected Is Not Money Spent

• There has been a long gap between collecting and paying out
• At one point the NBA had realised (collected) Rs 266 crore but disbursed (paid out) only Rs 145 crore [3].
• So about Rs 121 crore, nearly 45% of what was collected, had not yet moved down the chain [3].

• Cumulative disbursement has now reached Rs 202 crore [1]. The gap is closing, but slowly.

• The amounts are too small to change much on the ground

• Rs 2.02 crore across 30 States/UTs comes to about Rs 6.7 lakh each on average [1].

• Even top-ranked Madhya Pradesh got Rs 23.81 lakh for the whole State [1]. Spread across its BMCs, that is very little per village.

• Nobody publicly checks what happens after the State gets the money

• The PIB release names the uses: BMCs, PBRs, landraces, habitats [1]. It gives no BMC-level spending report.
• PRS found no public data on how well BMCs work, how many PBRs are complete, or how much benefit-sharing money actually reaches people [12].
• Without such data, nobody can show whether ABS money reached a single conserving farmer.

11. How the 2023 Amendment Weakened the Community's Voice

• Communities lost their direct seat at the table
• Under the 2002 Act, benefit-sharing terms were agreed between the user, local bodies and benefit claimers (the people owed a share) [12].
• The amendment Bill changed this. Terms are now agreed between the user and the BMC, with the NBA representing the BMC [12].

• So the people who hold the knowledge do not negotiate directly any more.

• There is no clear step for community consent

• The Nagoya Protocol expects prior informed consent (permission given before use, with full information) from indigenous and local communities [12].

• PRS noted that the Bill had no mechanism to obtain that consent [12].

• A vague exemption could empty out benefit-sharing

• The Bill exempted "codified traditional knowledge" (knowledge already written down) from benefit-sharing, but did not define the term [12].
• The problem: PBRs themselves write down local knowledge. So almost all traditional knowledge could count as "codified" and escape payment [12].

• The Joint Parliamentary Committee (Chair: Dr Sanjay Jaiswal; report tabled 2 Aug 2022) warned that this could deny benefits to most local knowledge holders [13].

• The exemption for cultivated plants is hard to check

• Cultivated medicinal plants used by AYUSH practitioners were exempted, but the Bill did not say how to tell a cultivated plant from a wild one [12].

• The Certificate of Origin portal for cultivated medicinal plants is the government's tool to fill this gap [8]. It works only if those certificates are checked properly.

• Penalties moved from courts to officials

• Jail terms of up to five years were replaced by fines of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 50 lakh, and up to Rs 1 crore for continuing violations [12].
• An officer of at least Joint Secretary rank decides the fine, with no guidance on how to choose within a 50-fold range [12].
• Weaker deterrence means less pressure on companies to declare their use of Indian resources in the first place.

12. Who Should Do What Next

• NBA: use PBR records before falling back on area
• Where a seed company's hybrid draws on a landrace already listed in a PBR, that BMC should get a set share first [12].

• Only the remaining money should be split by cultivation area [1].

• MoEFCC: define "codified traditional knowledge" narrowly in the rules

• The JPC recommended limiting it to knowledge taken from the authoritative books listed in the First Schedule of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 [13].

• That would stop PBR-recorded village knowledge from being treated as "codified" and exempted.

• SBBs and UTBCs: publish BMC-level spending every year

• The NBA already publishes State-wise shares [1]. The next step is to publish which BMC got how much and what it was spent on.

• This would answer the data gap PRS pointed out [12].

• NBA and SBBs: close the collect-to-spend gap

• Set a time limit for passing money from realisation to the SBB, and from the SBB to the BMC. That stops a repeat of the Rs 266 crore realised versus Rs 145 crore disbursed gap [3].

• India at COP 17: link the domestic record to the DSI debate

• Seed companies increasingly work from genetic sequence data, not physical seed. The Cali Fund now covers benefit-sharing from DSI (Digital Sequence Information, genetic data stored digitally) [11].
• India should push for Cali Fund money to reach local communities, not just national governments. Its own seed-sector case shows how easily communities drop out once a formula replaces a named claimer [1][11].

13. Anchors for Answers

• Data: Rs 266 crore ABS realised vs Rs 145 crore disbursed at one point, so about 45% not yet passed down [3]; cumulative disbursement now Rs 202 crore [1]
• Data: Top 10 States took Rs 1.43 crore of Rs 2.02 crore; the other 20 States/UTs average about Rs 3 lakh each [1]
• Report/Committee: Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 (Chair: Dr Sanjay Jaiswal, tabled 2 Aug 2022). It warned that undefined "codified traditional knowledge" could deny benefits to most local knowledge holders [13]
• Law/Case: Biological Diversity Act, 2002 as amended in 2023: benefit-sharing terms are now set between the user and the BMC represented by the NBA, and benefit claimers no longer negotiate directly [12]; Nagoya Protocol requires prior informed consent of local communities [12]
• Comparison: Cali Fund (COP 16) applies benefit-sharing to DSI, beyond physical samples [11]
• Scheme: Certificate of Origin portal for cultivated medicinal plants, the tool for checking the cultivated-plant exemption [8]; PM Van Dhan Yojana, named for linking ABS money to livelihoods [1]

14. Mains Relevance

• GS-III: conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, biodiversity; IPR in biotechnology and agriculture (biopiracy).
• GS-II: statutory bodies; federal arrangements; important international institutions and agreements (CBD, Nagoya Protocol).
• GS-I (secondary): tribal communities and their knowledge systems.
• Possible question stems: 1. Access and Benefit-Sharing remains more promise than practice in India. Critically examine with reference to the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023. (15 marks) 2. When benefit claimers cannot be identified, how should ABS proceeds be distributed? Evaluate the area-based approach adopted by the National Biodiversity Authority. (10 marks) 3. Discuss the significance of Digital Sequence Information for benefit-sharing under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and India's stake in the debate. (15 marks)

15. Related Topics to Study Next

• Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023: the AYUSH exemptions and decriminalisation changed how ABS works.
• Nagoya Protocol and CBD: the parent international ABS regime.
• Kunming–Montreal GBF (23 targets): Targets 13 and 19 come up in the news repeatedly.
• Cali Fund and DSI: the next frontier of benefit-sharing.
• PPV&FR Act, 2001: protects farmers' rights over seed varieties; the overlap with BD Act ABS is often tested.
• People's Biodiversity Registers and BMCs: the grassroots institutions that receive ABS money.
• Certificate of Origin for cultivated medicinal plants: an exemption pathway under the amended framework. [8]
• PM-JANMAN and Van Dhan Yojana: schemes named for convergence. [1]

16. NCERT Concepts to Revise

• Access and benefit sharing (Economy): The note's central idea: companies using India's biological resources must share benefits with providers, here via the NBA's disbursement.
• Biological Diversity Act 2002 (Geography): The parent law creating NBA, State Boards and local committees, and the 2023 amendment the note criticises.
• Nagoya Protocol (Geography): The international treaty behind ABS, with its 2010 adoption and 2014 entry into force tested in Prelims.
• Biodiversity Management Committees (Geography): Local bodies that keep People's Biodiversity Registers and are meant to receive ABS money at village level.
• Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Geography): Its Targets 13 and 19 on benefit-sharing and finance frame India's ABS record ahead of COP 17.
• Biopiracy (Economy): ABS exists to stop firms taking biological resources or traditional knowledge without consent or payment to source communities.

17. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Ministry: the NBA is under MoEFCC, not MoA&FW. MoA&FW only supplied the cultivation-area data. [1]
• Mixing up figures: keep these apart. [1][3]
• Rs 2.02 crore is this one release.
• Rs 202 crore is the cumulative disbursement.
• Rs 266 crore was the cumulative amount realised at an earlier date.

• Rs 21.26 crore was realised in FY 2025–26.

• Nagoya dates: adopted in 2010, in force in 2014. Don't confuse with the Cartagena (biosafety) or Nagoya–Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocols. [9]

• KMGBF targets: Target 13 is benefit-sharing and Target 19 is finance. Students often swap them with Target 3 ("30x30"). [1][10]
• COP venues: COP 15 was Kunming/Montreal, COP 16 was Cali, and COP 17 is Yerevan. [1][11]