🌿 Environment & EcologyMAINS · GS3.14

India files first Nagoya Protocol national report

India submits its first national report to the CBD on how it shares the benefits of its genetic resources — and the numbers show it now anchors the global system.

What happened

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), working through the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), submitted India's First National Report (NR1) on the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol to the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
The report was filed on 27 February 2026, in compliance with Article 29 of the Protocol, which obliges every Party to periodically report on the measures it has taken to implement the agreement.
NR1 covers the reporting window 1 November 2017 to 31 December 2025 — roughly the period since the Protocol entered into operational force in India through its access-and-benefit-sharing (ABS) machinery.
The report is positioned as India's contribution to Target 13 of its updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP), the target dealing with fair and equitable benefit-sharing from the use of genetic resources.
The submission is significant less as a one-off filing and more as a stock-take: it is the first time India has formally placed before the world the scale of its operating ABS regime, and the figures it reports put it at the centre of the global compliance system.

Background & context

The lineage here runs through three nested instruments. The outermost is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the 1992 Rio treaty built on three objectives: conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources — the third of which is the part this report is about. Sitting under the CBD are two supplementary protocols: the Cartagena Protocol (2000) on biosafety (the transboundary movement of living modified organisms), and the Nagoya Protocol (2010) on access and benefit-sharing. The two are routinely confused; the Nagoya Protocol is the ABS instrument and has nothing to do with biosafety.

The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization was adopted at the tenth Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the CBD, held in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010. It is a legally binding supplementary agreement that gives operational teeth to the CBD's third objective. Its core logic is simple: a country that provides a genetic resource (the "provider country") is entitled, in return for granting access, to a share of whatever benefits the user derives from it. Access is to be granted on the provider's prior informed consent (PIC) and on mutually agreed terms (MAT); the benefits flowing back may be monetary (royalties, fees, milestone payments) or non-monetary (technology transfer, training, joint research, capacity-building). The Protocol entered into force internationally in 2014, twelve months after the fiftieth instrument of ratification.

India is both a provider of genetic resources — it is one of the world's seventeen megadiverse countries — and, increasingly, a user, which is why a strong ABS regime matters to it on both sides of the bargain. India's domestic ABS architecture predates the Protocol: it was already built into the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, enacted to give effect to India's obligations under the CBD itself. The Protocol added an international compliance and certification layer on top of that existing law. Over the reporting period the domestic framework was modernised twice — through the Biological Diversity Rules, 2024 and the Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Regulations, 2025 — which together replaced the older 2014 ABS guidelines and refreshed the procedures for approvals, fees and benefit-sharing. This NR1 is therefore the first national report filed against that updated rulebook.

For Prelims

Entity: Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) — a 2010 supplementary agreement to the CBD; adopted at COP-10 in Nagoya, Japan; in force internationally since 2014.
What it governs: access to genetic resources (and associated traditional knowledge) and the fair, equitable sharing of benefits from their utilisation — built on Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT).
The report: India's First National Report (NR1), submitted 27 February 2026 under Article 29; reporting window 1 Nov 2017 – 31 Dec 2025; counts toward Target 13 of India's updated NBSAP.
Domestic law: the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, now supported by the Biological Diversity Rules, 2024 and the ABS Regulations, 2025.
Three-tier institutional structure: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA, national level, Chennai), State Biodiversity Boards / UT Biodiversity Councils (state level), and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs, local body level).
BMC reach: over 2,76,653 BMCs established across local bodies.
Approvals (2017–2025): 12,830 ABS approvals in total — 5,913 by the NBA (for foreign/Section-3(2) entities) and 6,917 by SBBs/UTBCs (for Indian Section-7 entities).
Global compliance footprint: 3,556 Internationally Recognised Certificates of Compliance (IRCCs) published on the ABS Clearing-House — more than 60% of the global total.
Money mobilised: ₹216.31 crore through NBA approvals, of which ₹139.69 crore was disbursed to benefit claimers; a further ₹51.96 crore through SBB/UTBC approvals.
Other markers: 395 NBA approvals carrying non-monetary benefits; 41 Form-10 declarations for foreign bioresources; 2,56,393 individuals trained across 3,724 workshops.

The full set it belongs to (CBD family). Match-the-pairs survival: CBD (1992, the parent framework convention) → Cartagena Protocol (2000, biosafety / LMOs) → Nagoya Protocol (2010, access and benefit-sharing) → Nagoya–Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol (2010, liability and redress under biosafety). The CBD's three objectives are conservation, sustainable use, and benefit-sharing — and a recurring prelims trap is asking which objective the Nagoya Protocol serves: it is the third (benefit-sharing), not conservation.

The institutional pairing table. NBA → national level → handles applications by foreign nationals/companies and NRIs and by Indians for transfer of research results or IPR (Sections 3, 4, 6 of the 2002 Act). State Biodiversity Boards/UT Councils → state level → handle applications by Indian entities for commercial use (Section 7). Biodiversity Management Committees → local body (panchayat/municipality) level → prepare the People's Biodiversity Register and conserve local biodiversity. The NBA is headquartered in Chennai.

What it is NOT. The Nagoya Protocol is not a biosafety instrument — that is the Cartagena Protocol; do not pair Nagoya with living modified organisms or GMOs. It is not a stand-alone treaty either — it is a supplementary protocol to the CBD, so only CBD Parties can join it. It does not govern conservation or sustainable use directly; its single object is the third CBD pillar, benefit-sharing. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 is not the same thing as the Protocol — the Act is India's domestic law (it predates and is broader than the Protocol's ABS focus), while the Protocol is the international agreement the Act partly implements. And an IRCC is not a permit to access a resource; it is a certificate, generated from a national ABS permit and posted on the ABS Clearing-House, that lets other countries recognise that access was lawful.

For UPSC: The Nagoya Protocol (2010) is the CBD's access-and-benefit-sharing instrument, built on PIC + MAT and in force since 2014; in India it is administered under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 through the three-tier NBA → State Biodiversity Boards → BMC structure. India now holds over 60% of all Internationally Recognised Certificates of Compliance on the ABS Clearing-House.

Why it matters

The problem the ABS regime addresses is an old grievance often summed up as "biopiracy" — the historical pattern in which genetic material and the traditional knowledge of communities in biodiversity-rich, mostly developing countries were taken, commercialised and patented abroad with no consent and no benefit flowing back to the source. The turmeric and neem patent disputes of the 1990s are the textbook Indian examples that helped build the political case for a benefit-sharing regime. The CBD asserted the principle that States have sovereign rights over their genetic resources; the Nagoya Protocol turned that principle into an enforceable, certificate-backed system; and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 with the NBA built India's machinery to operate it.

What this first report demonstrates is that the machinery is not merely on paper. India holding more than three-fifths of the world's Internationally Recognised Certificates of Compliance is a statement that its system is the most actively used national ABS regime on the planet — a credibility asset for a megadiverse provider country, and a model other developing nations can point to. The ₹216.31 crore mobilised and the share disbursed to benefit claimers show actual value reaching back toward conservation and toward the communities that are the custodians of the resource. The submission also closes a reporting loop with the CBD, keeping India in good standing and feeding the global stock-take on Target 13.

For Mains

Anchor

A question on India's framework for protecting and sharing the benefits of its biological wealth can be anchored on the Nagoya Protocol and the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 — the international instrument and its domestic vehicle — with NR1 as the evidence that the regime is operational.

Substantiation

Hard data to substantiate any answer on benefit-sharing or conservation finance: 12,830 ABS approvals (2017–2025), 3,556 IRCCs (over 60% of the global total), ₹216.31 crore mobilised with ₹139.69 crore disbursed to benefit claimers, and 2,76,653+ BMCs.

Exemplification

India serves as a working example of a megadiverse provider country that has built a functioning three-tier ABS architecture — useful in answers on bridging the gap between treaty commitments and ground-level implementation.

Problematisation

The same figures expose the governance question worth raising: with 2.7 lakh BMCs but uneven capacity, and benefit-sharing still a fraction of the value of the bio-economy, how far do collections actually reach the local communities and conservation that justify the system?

Way-forward

The 2024 Rules and 2025 ABS Regulations, plus the 3,724 training workshops, point toward the way forward: simpler procedures, stronger compliance monitoring through the Clearing-House, and capacity-building at the BMC level.

Position

India's stated stance: sovereign rights over genetic resources, fair and equitable benefit-sharing, and the protection of associated traditional knowledge — the developing-world position the Protocol was built to advance.

Deploys into: conservation, environmental pollution and ecology (GS3.14); biodiversity governance and the CBD framework; protection of traditional knowledge and tackling biopiracy; international environmental conventions and India's treaty obligations.

Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change · 2026-03-16 · PRID 2240577 · PIB source ↗