Bhupender Yadav Chairs 27th G.B. Pant Society Meeting

Shri Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, took the chair at the 27th meeting of the G.B. Pant Society of Himalayan Environment and Development in New Delhi on 15 October 2026. Four publications of the institute were released at the meeting.

Who was present

The Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Narendra Bhooshan, attended, as did Shri Santosh Tewari, who is Director General (Forests) and Special Secretary in the ministry. Other senior officers of the ministry and the members of the society were also at the meeting.

Benefit sharing and the people's registers

The minister dwelt on two ideas. The first is the set of access and benefit-sharing rights that lets a community gain from the biological wealth around it. The second is the People's Biodiversity Register (PBR), the local record of species, landraces and traditional knowledge. Shri Yadav said both of these can lift the livelihoods of villagers native to the Himalayan ecosystem and serve the wider good of that ecosystem. He placed community participation at the centre of biodiversity conservation.

A framework with a 2047 horizon

The minister said that under the leadership of the Prime Minister there has been a steady focus on building a policy framework for the Indian Himalayan Region that holds ecological security and sustainable socio-economic growth together, with 2047 as the horizon. That is the year by which the government wants the balance between protection and development settled for the mountain states.

The four publications

Each of the volumes released adds to the institute's store of knowledge. One of them deals with biodiversity and the practices followed to conserve it in the Bhagirathi Eco-sensitive Zone. A second volume is devoted to the Gangotri Glaciated System. The third takes up e-PBR governance, that is the electronic management of People's Biodiversity Registers, for the Indian Himalayan Region. The last of the four is a volume on the Ramsar wetlands found in the Indian Himalayan Region.

Why it matters for the mountains

The society carries the name of Govind Ballabh Pant and its work is tied to the environment and development of the Himalaya. A meeting of this kind sets the institute's research agenda, and the publications released here cover glaciers, wetlands, eco-sensitive zones and biodiversity records, which are the four questions on which policy for the mountain region now turns.