India leads world in Nagoya Protocol certificates

India now issues more compliance certificates than every other country combined under the Nagoya Protocol's access and benefit-sharing system.

What happened

• The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change reported that India has become the global leader in issuing Internationally Recognized Certificates of Compliance (IRCCs) under the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing (ABS).
• India has issued 3,561 IRCCs out of a global total of 6,311 — over 56 per cent of every such certificate issued worldwide, according to the latest data on the ABS Clearing-House.
• That places India far ahead of the next issuers: France (964), Spain (320), Argentina (257), Panama (156) and Kenya (144).
• Of 142 countries registered on the ABS Clearing-House, only 34 have issued any IRCCs so far — a sign of how unevenly the protocol is being operationalised.
• India's lead is credited to its access and benefit-sharing framework under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, run through a three-tier institutional structure.

Background & context

An IRCC is not a stand-alone instrument; it sits inside a layered architecture of international environmental law that an aspirant should be able to draw top-to-bottom. The base is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, with 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. That third objective — "access and benefit-sharing" — was left as broad principle in 1992 and needed an operational rulebook of its own.

That rulebook is the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization, adopted at the 10th Conference of the Parties (COP-10) to the CBD held at Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, and in force from 2014. It is a supplementary agreement to the CBD — it does not replace the Convention; it gives the third CBD objective legal teeth. India is a party to both. The Nagoya Protocol's companion under the same Convention is the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000), which governs the transboundary movement of living modified organisms — a deliberately different subject, and a classic pairing trap.

The protocol works on a simple bargain. A user (a researcher, a company, a bioprospector) who wants to access a country's genetic resources — or the traditional knowledge associated with them — must first obtain the provider country's Prior Informed Consent (PIC) and negotiate Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) that spell out how any resulting benefits, monetary or non-monetary, will be shared back with the provider. When a country's competent national authority grants that permit and registers the details on the ABS Clearing-House, the registration generates an IRCC. The certificate then travels with the resource as official evidence that PIC was obtained and MAT established, allowing the resource to be tracked from research and innovation through to eventual commercial use, so that benefits flow back fairly to the country of origin. India's domestic engine for all of this is the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, enacted to give effect to India's CBD obligations and later strengthened to align with the Nagoya Protocol.

For Prelims

• IRCC — full form: Internationally Recognized Certificate of Compliance, issued under the Nagoya Protocol's access and benefit-sharing system.
• India's tally: 3,561 IRCCs of a global 6,311 — over 56%, the single largest national share.
• The ranking after India: France 964 · Spain 320 · Argentina 257 · Panama 156 · Kenya 144.
• Coverage of the system: 142 countries on the ABS Clearing-House; only 34 have issued any IRCC.
• What an IRCC certifies: that Prior Informed Consent (PIC) was obtained and Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) established between the user and the provider of the resource.
• Parent treaty chain: CBD (1992, Rio) → its third objective (benefit-sharing) → operationalised by the Nagoya Protocol (adopted 2010 at COP-10, Nagoya, Japan; in force 2014).
• The ABS Clearing-House: the global online platform where access permits are registered for transparency and accountability; registration is what generates the IRCC.
• Domestic legal basis: the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, India's law giving effect to the CBD and ABS obligations.
• India's three-tier ABS structure: National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) at the centre (Chennai-headquartered) · State Biodiversity Boards / UT Biodiversity Councils at the State level · Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the local body level.
• The local instrument: BMCs prepare the People's Biodiversity Register (PBR) documenting local biological resources and associated traditional knowledge.

What it is NOT

• Not the Cartagena Protocol. Cartagena (2000) governs living modified organisms / biosafety; Nagoya (2010) governs access and benefit-sharing. Both are protocols under the same CBD, but they are different instruments — a frequent "match the pairs" trap.
• The Nagoya Protocol does not replace the CBD. It is a supplementary agreement that operationalises the CBD's third objective; the CBD remains the parent.
• An IRCC is not a research grant, a patent, or an export licence. It is a compliance certificate evidencing PIC and MAT — proof that access was lawful and benefit-sharing terms exist.
• Leadership in IRCCs is not the same as leadership in biodiversity itself. India ranks high in issuing certificates (procedural implementation); the count reflects how actively its ABS machinery processes access permits, not a ranking of megadiverse status.

The full set to carry

• Under the CBD, the two protocols: Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000) and Nagoya Protocol on ABS (2010). The Nagoya–Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol (2010) further deals with liability and redress under Cartagena.
• The three CBD objectives: conservation · sustainable use · fair and equitable benefit-sharing.
• India's biodiversity governance ladder: CBD → Biological Diversity Act, 2002 → Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 → NBA / State Boards / BMCs.
• Two consent terms to pair correctly: PIC (Prior Informed Consent, from the provider) and MAT (Mutually Agreed Terms, the benefit-sharing contract).
• Top IRCC issuers in order: India → France → Spain → Argentina → Panama → Kenya.

Why it matters

The problem the Nagoya Protocol addresses is "biopiracy" — the historic pattern of genetic resources and traditional knowledge from biodiversity-rich, often developing, countries being commercialised abroad without consent and without any share of the resulting benefits flowing back to the source community. India has lived this problem directly: the contested patent claims over neem, haldi (turmeric) and Basmati in earlier decades are the textbook cases that pushed India to build a strong domestic ABS regime and to champion benefit-sharing internationally. The IRCC is the practical answer — a portable, internationally recognised proof that access was lawful and that benefit-sharing terms are in place, making it far harder for a resource to be exploited downstream without the provider country's claim travelling with it.

India's 56-per-cent share therefore signals something specific: not that India simply has the most biodiversity, but that its three-tier institutional machinery — NBA, State Boards and BMCs — is actually processing access applications and registering them, where most of the 142 ABS Clearing-House members have issued none. The release frames this as the dividend of "streamlined procedures and strong institutional mechanisms." It is, in effect, a governance-capacity story dressed as an environment headline: the gap between 34 issuers and 142 members is the unfinished work of the protocol globally, and a problem-statement an answer can lean on. For a country positioning itself as a voice of the Global South on biodiversity equity, a documented lead in operationalising benefit-sharing is also a diplomatic asset heading into future CBD COPs and the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

For Mains