I-OECM Guidelines 2026 Released at CBD COP-17 in Yerevan

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav released the Guidelines for the designation of India's Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (I-OECMs) 2026 on 3 November 2026 at a side event of the seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, or CBD COP-17, in Yerevan, Armenia. The Ministry announced the release on 4 November 2026.

The side event

The event carried the title From Policy to Practice: Advancing India's Biodiversity Commitments through Innovation, Finance, ABS and OECMs. Three bodies organised it: the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Armenia's Environment Minister and the Executive Secretary of the CBD joined the release.

What an OECM is

An OECM is land or water lying outside the legally protected network that still delivers lasting in-situ conservation of biodiversity, achieved mainly by managing the wider landscape well. The minister described the approach as a new era of conservation. The guidelines, drawn up by MoEFCC with the NBA, set out how such areas are to be recognised and reported. They cover terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine ecosystems, and offer examples such as biodiversity parks, sacred groves, community-managed irrigation tanks, seagrass and seaweed beds, and fisheries seasonal ban areas.

Four mandatory criteria

• The area must not already be a legally protected or conserved area
• It must be governed under Central or State government frameworks, or by government-recognised local institutions such as Panchayats and Biodiversity Management Committees
• It must have defined boundaries and must not overlap anything already reported to the World Database on Protected Areas
• Recognition must leave existing activities, governance and the regulatory regime of the area untouched

Biodiversity significance, ecosystem services and cultural values can qualify a site in addition. Applications reach the NBA from government departments, agencies, institutions, local self-governments and Biodiversity Management Committees. The NBA makes a preliminary examination and sends each application to the State Biodiversity Board or Union Territory Biodiversity Council within 30 days, and that body validates the information and returns its recommendation within another 30 days. An Inter-Departmental I-OECM Committee assists, the NBA takes the final call, and MoEFCC authorises recognition. Each recognised site needs a monitoring framework with measurable indicators, assessed at least once in five years, and recognised sites are published on the World Database on Protected and Conserved Areas through UNEP-WCMC. Recognition does not convert an area into a protected area and alters neither its ownership nor its legal status.

The GEF-8 project behind it

A GEF-8 project will apply the guidelines in six demonstration landscapes and seascapes. The Local Project Appraisal Committee cleared it on 29 December 2025, and it runs for 72 months, from 15 May 2026 to 15 May 2032, executed by the NBA and MoEFCC under the National Implementation Modality with UNDP support.

The six demonstration sites are the Gori Valley in Uttarakhand, the Kumbhalgarh-Mount Abu-Jaisalmer landscape in Rajasthan, the Satkosia-Kalahandi landscape in Odisha, the Srisailam-Cumbum landscape spanning Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the Sahyadri-Konkan landscape spanning Maharashtra and Goa, and the Lakshadweep Islands Marinescape. The effort serves Target 3, widely called the 30x30 goal, of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and National Biodiversity Target 3 under the updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for 2024-2030.