The recent interpretation of the Supreme Court of India regarding the fundamental duty of corporates to protect ecosystems while referring to Article 51A(g) of the Constitution of India can be seen as a nudge to channelise Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds towards the cause.
The court made the observations while referring to the renewable energy generators in the vicinity of habitats of the Great Indian Bustard.
With the enactment of Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, India became the first country in the world to mandate CSR. And what started off as voluntary philanthropy gradually evolved into a justiciable mechanism for corporate governance.
According to the India CSR Outlook Report (ICOR) 2025 by CSRBOX, which analysed CSR portfolios of 301 leading Indian companies, total CSR expenditure in 2024-2025 stood at Rs 17,742 crore, while the prescribed budget was Rs 18,216 crore. The average CSR spent per company rose to Rs 59 crore, a remarkable increase since 2015, reflecting the growing maturity of India Inc.’s social investments.
However, CSR spending in India remains concentrated in a few sectors. As per the report, promotion of education leads with 25 per cent of allocations, followed by healthcare & WASH (18 per cent) and vocational skill development (16 per cent), environment & sustainability (13 per cent) and livelihood promotion (12 per cent). Together, these five themes account for more than 80 per cent of India’s CSR budget (as per the sample). These mainstream sectors are easier and beneficial to invest in. Building schools, skill centres, or hospitals yields quick, tangible results which are ideal for annual reporting and stakeholder communication. They also align with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as gender equality, health, education and decent work, which adds to the company’s ESG profile.
According to Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013, environmental activities include “ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agroforestry, conservation of natural resources conservation of natural resources, and maintaining quality of soil, air and water.” In theory, wildlife and biodiversity conservation qualifies as a CSR activity. But in reality, it remains neglected.
As is clear from the ICOR 2025, the extent of corporate involvement in environmental CSR activities remains unbalanced. Although the majority of companies undertake initiatives such as tree plantation and water conservation efforts, the involvement of just one-third of companies in projects that could be correlated with wildlife and biodiversity conservation has been noted. However, it is essential to note that the findings from ICOR are based on company participation and thematic focus, and not the fund allocations made, which signify the lack of data visibility on biodiversity-related initiatives in the corporate CSR agenda.
Such a pattern is further reinforced by the data available from the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), which categorises environmental expenditure via broad heads, namely, “Environmental Sustainability, Agro-forestry, Animal Welfare, Conservation of Natural Resources and Clean Ganga Fund” without specifically disaggregating the details about biodiversity and wildlife-related funding. According to the FY 2023-24 data, although an amount of Rs 3,459 crore is disclosed on the above-mentioned broad heading, most of the allocated amount fell under the “environmental sustainability” category while a significant share was contributed towards “animal welfare” which is more related to domestic and captive animals and cannot be treated as “wildlife”. The lack of transparency on detailed allocation indicates that there is little awareness of the real focus of this CSR-related expenditure that is being directed towards the natural environment.
Despite India being a vastly diverse nation, inhabited by iconic endangered species and a complex web of ecosystems, wildlife and biodiversity conservation take a backseat in corporate philanthropy. The answer to the myriad challenges that hinder corporations from adopting wildlife and biodiversity as a core focus area lies in the fundamental contradiction between regulation serving CSR and on-the-ground practice.
There is a struggle between what businesses expect out of CSR versus the long gestation period and extended completion phases that come hand in hand with wildlife and biodiversity projects. CSR decision-makers frequently face trouble with the board while pitching ideas for wildlife and biodiversity as the management often prefers quick wins and measurable outcomes that can easily be seen in areas such as health or education. This short-term vision further escalates with the board’s impatience and need for a “wow effect”.
Additionally, businesses frequently choose project locations that are near to urban or local centres, making them accessible for employee engagement and visible to the public. This inadvertently excludes the isolated and ecologically critical areas vital for safeguarding India’s wildlife and biodiversity. Moreover, the topic itself is considered highly technical, and the management finds it difficult to link wildlife and biodiversity with their core strategy and nature of the business. This technicality adds to the problem of finding precise and measurable metrics, since biodiversity, that encompasses wildlife populations and habitats, is often viewed as “intangible and intractable”.
The problem is made worse due to the dearth of credible and reliable implementing agencies (IAs) that can commit to providing quantifiable and long-lasting wildlife and biodiversity conservation outcomes. This makes it difficult for CSR leaders to provide compelling wildlife and biodiversity arguments to corporate boards. Lastly, various regulatory and administrative constraints also restrict the implementation of wildlife and biodiversity projects. Since the protected areas and corridors for wildlife are on government land, the IAs typically encounter challenges with respect to land ownership, demanding bureaucratic and time-consuming approval processes.
The rate at which India is losing its wildlife is accelerating rapidly, and this is driven by changes in land use, mining, infrastructure expansion, pollution, and intensive agriculture-all areas, where private companies wield considerable influence. According to the National Wildlife Action Plan (2017-2031), habitat fragmentation due to infrastructure and heavy industrial pollution poses a great threat to the survival of elephants, big cats, herbivores, and migratory species. India now retains only about 10 per cent of its geographical area as grasslands, while nearly 30 per cent of its wetland cover has been lost over the past three decades. Additionally, extensive stretches of tiger and elephant corridors have been fragmented by mining, highways, and urbanisation. These disruptions not only increase vulnerability to poaching but also impede migration routes and intensify human-wildlife conflict (HWC).
These ecological pressures, therefore, are closely related to corporate operations. The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s forest clearance data indicates that more than 3 lakh (0.3 million) hectares of forest land have been diverted for mining, power projects, railways, and roads. Many of these have been inside or around wildlife habitats in the last 15 years under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Studies by the Wildlife Institute of India document the frequent mortality of elephants, leopards, sloth bears, and ungulates on highways and railway tracks, indicating severe corridor fragmentation.
According to the Biodiversity Finance Plan, 2019, India faced a resource gap of about Rs 46,000 crore in the period from 2017-18 to 2021-22. The report estimated and recommended bridging this gap by CSR funds of about Rs 718 crore in the year 2021-22. However, the CSR data available under the MCA’s records shows that although there is approximately Rs 3,000 crore of CSR spending that is categorised under environmental spending, such spending is classified only under major headings that do not break down CSR spending into wildlife or biodiversity-related categories. This is an important consideration because, despite the overall scarcity of spending in these areas, a redirected spending plan could greatly improve anti-poaching measures, habitat and corridor restoration, or HWC reduction.
Private sector participation is a moral obligation as well as a strategic necessity; corporate-led development has contributed much to biodiversity decline. With frameworks such as TNFD recognising biodiversity loss as a material financial risk, ecological resilience through CSR-driven wildlife conservation goes hand in glove with long-term economic stability.
The Companies Act, 2013 states that companies ‘shall’ give preference to the local areas around their operations for the sake of CSR. This provision restricts the flow of funds into forests and hinterland areas, which probably require such fundings the most, as wildlife does not usually exist in concrete jungles.
Moreover, the government can set up a dedicated fund for wildlife protection akin to PM CARES that could be eligible for CSR grants. This would help channelise the funds to this sector without the impediment of the fact that such projects have long gestation periods, which prevents corporates from investing in such projects as they are bound by liabilities of annual expenditures that should demonstrate impact. Moreover, this would favour wildlife conservation, as most of it is heavily regulated by the state, and the entry of private entities is limited. Moreover, the present schemes like Green Credit Program cover only tree plantations, and not the ecosystem as a whole, which is a bedrock of biodiversity conservation.
The critical success factors (CSF) for such projects must be decided beforehand during the project charter (or detailed project report) phase so that the project can be monitored and evaluated accordingly. The projects catering to the cause of wildlife require dedicated and customised CSF, as such projects cannot be usually evaluated in monetary or quantitative terms. Funding through Social Stock Exchange via novel mechanisms like Zero Coupon Zero Principal (ZCZP) bonds could help in more prudent and impactful investment as they ensure impact assessment and qualitative returns.
As per The Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Rules, 2014, companies are required to conduct a third party impact assessment of their CSR projects having a budgetary allocation of Rs 1 crore or more. This limit could be reduced to bring more projects under the ambit of impact assessment, which would enhance the credibility of small projects.
While India’s CSR landscape has matured and evolved significantly, the wildlife sector remains neglected despite its ecological importance. Bottlenecks such as long gestation periods and dearth of measurable indicators must be addressed by policy reforms. Some sort of dedicated wildlife funds, customised success metrics, and innovative financing like ZCZP bonds can channel impactful investing in this niche domain. By integrating biodiversity into strategic CSR policies which align with SDG 15, corporations can make a wonderful difference.
Jui Gusani, Aditi Agrawal, Anand Mishra and Aakash Bajpai are students of the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM)
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth