With 23 national targets, India submits biodiversity protection plan to global body

The KM-GBF was adopted in 2022 at the 15th meeting under the Convention on Biological Diversity and 196 countries agreed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 to achieve a nature-positive world.

Under its goals to reduce threats to biodiversity, India’s NBSAP has stated it will prioritise effective restoration of at least 30 per cent of degraded terrestrial, inland water, and marine and coastal ecosystems. This will help to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, ecological integrity and connectivity. India harbours nearly 8 per cent of the world’s known plant and animal species and 9.24 per cent of globally known plant species. It is home to 3,532 species of fish, 450 amphibian species, 738 reptilian species, 1,346 bird species and 436 mammals.

The NBSAP provides a framework for biodiversity conservation, enables focus on sustainable use of biological resources, and ensures fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived from them, the government’s action plan stated.

“The updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) aims to support both national and global conservation agendas. It seeks to effectively address key national challenges such as water crisis, food insecurity, unsustainable livelihoods, growing human-wildlife interactions, pollution, emerging diseases, disaster risks, and the overall vulnerabilities of communities and ecosystems,” the NBSAP stated.

Around eight of the 23 targets centre around reducing threats to biodiversity. They pertain to land and sea use change, pollution, species overexploitation, climate change, managing the threat of invasive alien species and ecosystem restoration.

As part of its plans to achieve the target of managing invasive alien species, the action plan stated that the country has to “eliminate, minimize, reduce and or mitigate the impact of prioritized invasive alien species on biodiversity and ecosystem services”. This will be done by managing pathways which introduce alien species into the ecosystem and eradicating or controlling invasive species, especially in priority sites, such as islands.

Trade in exotic wildlife species, abandoning of exotic pets, and farming of exotic fish for trade are some of the ways in which invasive alien wildlife gets introduced into the ecosystem.

An important action point listed under this target is to develop quarantine measures to monitor introduction pathways and establish a national database on the extent and control of invasive alien species reported in India, the NBSAP stated.

India also needs substantial financial support to meet these targets. The country has undertaken national biodiversity expenditure review assessments to map the government expenditure on biodiversity-related schemes. The annual average attributable biodiversity expenditure for the period 2017-18 to 2021-22 was estimated to be Rs 32,207.13 crore. To achieve the targets in the 2024-25 to 2029-2030 period, the projected annual average expenditure is estimated to be Rs 81,664.88 crore. The action plan, however, added that a more comprehensive assessment is necessary.