NBA Releases Rs 1.04 Crore ABS Money to Biodiversity Boards

The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) has sent out roughly Rs 1.04 crore gathered under access and benefit-sharing (ABS) rules to 27 State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) and two Union Territory Biodiversity Councils (UTBCs). The money was paid in by companies that took farm biological resources for research and for commercial work, and it now returns to conservation work in the states where those crops grow. The release shows how value drawn from agricultural biodiversity can be turned back into protecting it.

Who paid, and for which crops

Three firms made the benefit-sharing payments: Crystal Crop Protection Limited, Savannah Seeds Private Limited and Nunhems India Private Limited. The payments cover access to five crops — pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), jowar (Sorghum bicolor), maize (Zea mays), rice (Oryza sativa) and bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria). All five sit at the heart of India’s farm biodiversity and carry the food security, farm livelihoods and plant-breeding work built on them.

How each state’s share was fixed

When a resource reaches a company through markets, traders or middlemen, no single benefit claimer can be identified. For such cases the NBA follows an area-based method: a state’s share rises with the geographical spread of the crop and the area under it, read off the farm statistics that the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare puts out through its Unified Portal for Agricultural Statistics. The listing names the ten largest state shares and groups the rest together.

The biggest state shares

The law that makes it work

India’s ABS system rests on three instruments. The parent law is the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which Parliament amended in 2023. Below it sit the Biological Diversity Rules, 2024. Alongside them run the Access and Benefit-Sharing Regulations, 2025. A just share of whatever a user gains from a biological resource is worked out under Section 21 of the parent Act. The arrangement carries out India’s promises under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol, and feeds Target 13 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which asks countries to make sure gains from genetic resources, digital sequence information and linked traditional knowledge are shared fairly.

The running total

Farming has by now brought in close to Rs 87 crore, about $9.16 million, of ABS money, making it one of the strongest feeders of the mechanism. Counting every sector, the NBA has released more than Rs 204 crore, about $21.48 million, in ABS benefits so far. India will place this record before a side event of CBD COP 17 titled ‘From Policy to Practice: Advancing India’s Biodiversity Commitments through Innovation, Finance, and ABS’, set for 28 October 2026 in Yerevan, Armenia. The boards and councils must spend what they get on conservation and sustainable use, documentation, research, training and firmer local biodiversity governance.