PIB TrackerRs 9.68 crore in six months for access to India’s biological resources
The National Biodiversity Authority published its benefit-sharing receipts with the companies named - and three-quarters of it came from the seed sector.
What happened
- The National Biodiversity Authority received Rs 9.68 crore between 1 April and 30 September 2026 under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (as amended in 2023) and the ABS Regulations.
- Sector split: agriculture Rs 7.16 crore, food and beverages Rs 1.59 crore, animal husbandry Rs 62.01 lakh, AYUSH Rs 21 lakh, Red Sanders Rs 6 lakh, cosmetics Rs 4 lakh.
- Largest contributor East West Seeds India (about Rs 2.01 crore); largest single payment Rs 1.17 crore from Synergia Life Science.
- Payers included entities from Sri Lanka, Germany, France, the Republic of Korea and Bhutan.
- Since 2008 the Authority has realised about Rs 278 crore and disbursed more than Rs 200 crore for conservation and community benefits.
For Prelims
- Biological Diversity Act, 2002: India’s law giving effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It has a three-tier structure - the National Biodiversity Authority at Chennai, State Biodiversity Boards, and Biodiversity Management Committees at local body level.
- Access and Benefit Sharing: the principle that users of a biological resource or associated traditional knowledge must share the benefits with the country and the community it came from - the third objective of the CBD, after conservation and sustainable use.
- Nagoya Protocol: adopted 2010, in force 2014, the CBD protocol that made ABS operational internationally through prior informed consent and mutually agreed terms. India ratified it in 2012.
- The 2023 amendment: exempted registered AYUSH practitioners and cultivated medicinal plants from ABS, decriminalised offences into monetary penalties, and eased the position for Indian companies with foreign equity - changes criticised as narrowing the Act and defended as removing barriers to research.
- Biodiversity Management Committee: constituted by every local body, it maintains the People’s Biodiversity Register documenting local resources and knowledge, and is entitled to a share of benefits collected.
- Red Sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus): endemic to the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, listed in CITES Appendix II, and heavily smuggled - which is why receipts specify cultivated and auctioned sources.
- Why the seed sector dominates: plant breeders need access to landraces and wild relatives as breeding material, and the transaction is traceable in a way that an ayurvedic formulation using a common herb is not.
- The parallel statute: the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001 runs a separate National Gene Fund for benefit sharing over plant varieties, which is why crop germplasm can attract obligations under two laws.
For UPSC: The only regular public accounting of what access and benefit sharing actually collects in India, and it names payers and resources. Deploy it on the Biological Diversity Act and its 2023 amendment, on the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol, on bioprospecting and traditional knowledge, and on the economics of conservation.
What it is NOT: No denominator: there is no estimate of how much use of Indian biological resources occurs, so Rs 9.68 crore cannot be read as adequate or negligible. Nothing on how many applications were processed, pending or rejected. No breakdown of the Rs 200 crore disbursed since 2008 - how much reached Biodiversity Management Committees, and which communities. Nothing on the effect of the 2023 amendment, which exempted AYUSH practitioners and cultivated medicinal plants, on the AYUSH figure of Rs 21 lakh that now sits near the bottom of the table. And no enforcement data against users who do not pay.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.14 · GS2.9 · Linkage L1
Anchor
The National Biodiversity Authority has published its access and benefit-sharing receipts for April to September 2026: Rs 9.68 crore from users of India’s biological resources, with the paying companies named. Agriculture and seed accounted for Rs 7.16 crore, food and beverages Rs 1.59 crore, animal husbandry Rs 62.01 lakh, and AYUSH, Red Sanders and cosmetics the remainder.
Substantiation (data)
East West Seeds India was the largest contributor at about Rs 2.01 crore; the single largest payment was Rs 1.17 crore from Synergia Life Science; Nunhems India made upfront payments of about Rs 1.64 crore. Payers included entities from Sri Lanka, Germany, France, Korea and Bhutan. The resources accessed run from chickpea, moong and brinjal through Ashwagandha, Shatavari and Moringa to soil microorganisms such as Rhizobium and Trichoderma and the frozen semen of Murrah buffalo. Since 2008 the Authority has realised about Rs 278 crore and disbursed over Rs 200 crore.
Position
Naming the payers is the thing to notice. Access and benefit sharing is a regime built on contracts between a user and a State authority, and such contracts are almost always confidential, which makes it impossible for anyone outside to judge whether the share is fair. Publishing company names and amounts turns a private settlement into a public record, and it is the only basis on which a Biodiversity Management Committee could ever ask whether the resource taken from its area was properly valued.
Counterpoint
The totals are very small. Rs 278 crore over eighteen years is about Rs 15 crore a year, from a country that is one of seventeen megadiverse nations, and nothing in the release estimates how much use of Indian biological resources actually occurs - so there is no way to know whether this is most of what is owed or a fraction of it. The composition is also narrow: three-quarters comes from the seed sector, and AYUSH, the industry built most directly on Indian medicinal plants, contributed Rs 21 lakh.
Way forward
Two disclosures would do most of the work. First, the downstream split of the Rs 200 crore disbursed - how much reached Biodiversity Management Committees and which communities received it, since the Act’s whole premise is that benefit flows back to the source. Second, applications processed, pending and refused, which would show whether the low totals reflect low use or low enforcement. The AYUSH figure should be read against the 2023 amendment that exempted practitioners and cultivated plants.
Conclusion
A genuinely useful disclosure of a regime that usually operates out of sight, and the sectoral split is the finding: benefit sharing in India is, in practice, seed companies paying for crop germplasm. Whether Rs 9.68 crore in six months is a success or a shortfall is a question the release cannot answer because it reports no denominator.
Deploys into: Biological Diversity Act and the 2023 amendment · CBD and the Nagoya Protocol · Bioprospecting and traditional knowledge · The economics of conservation
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change · 2026-10-08 · PRID 2320995 · PIB source ↗