The Indian delegation to the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) of the Convention on Biological Diversity organised a side event to release the updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan (NBSAP).
The 208-page document titled Updated National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plan: A Roadmap for Conservation of India’s Biodiversity was released by Kirti Vardhan Singh, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The delegates were joined by Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity along with Kandya Obezo and Mauricio Chabera from the Colombian government.
At COP15, parties were asked to submit updated NBSAPs which are aligned with the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF). Most countries are slow in finalising the NBSAP and in the interim, they have submitted the National Targets on biodiversity.
This NBSAP is the third that the government has developed since 2000.
Some 21 ministries were involved in the process which involved:
(i) Stocktaking and review of existing NBSAP
(ii) Consultations with national, interministerial, and regional/ state levels stakeholders
(iii) Situation and problem analysis
(iv) Collection of primary information from central ministries on ongoing schemes, biodiversity expenditure, financial needs, and subsidy, and secondary information on efforts made towards conservation and new initiatives
(v) Setting National Biodiversity Targets, action plan, and a monitoring framework
(vi) Preparation of draft NBSAP
(vii) Review of draft NBSAP, and incorporation of feedback
(viii) Finalisation and adoption of the NBSAP
India has set 23 targets, similar to the KMGBF under six broad conservation domains. These are area-based conservation; increased ecosystem resilience; recovery, rehabilitation, and conservation of threatened species; conservation of agrobiodiversity; sustainable management and use of biodiversity; an enabling conditions, tools, and solutions for implementation.
The document also provides a financial plan. The Biodiversity Expenditure Review and Biodiversity Finance Solutions were conducted and the average annual attributable biodiversity expenditure for the period FY 2017-2018 to 2021-2022 was estimated to the tune of Rs 32,20,713 crore at the Government of India level.
This was used to project the biodiversity attributable expenditure for the period FY 2024-2025 to FY 2029-2030. The estimation suggests that implementation would require an estimated annual average financial requirement of Rs 81,664.88 crore at the central government level.
To generate this money, the Biodiversity Finance Plan suggests some financial solutions. These include augmenting public finance, corporate social responsibility, ecological fiscal transfer, and access and benefit sharing (ABS).
Singh talked about the various challenges India faces due to habitat fragmentation, pollution, illegal wildlife trade and adverse effects of climate change. He said the updated NBSAP provides strategies to tackle these.
Schomaker said India’s NBSAP is an encouragement to other countries to submit their plans too. She said she is looking forward to its implementation.