Environment › Biodiversity governance
Biodiversity and wildlife law in India
India's own biodiversity and wildlife law and the bodies that run it: the Biological Diversity Act and its three tiers, access and benefit sharing, the Wildlife (Protection) Act and its schedules, zoos and animal welfare. Prelims has asked about Biodiversity Management Committees and what Schedule I protection means.
9 Sep 2026 · 8 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
The law India acts under at home sorts species into schedules, and which schedule an animal sits in decides what a seizure can be charged as.
- Schedule I gives the highest protection, as it does to the leopard and to every species in the seizures above.
- Schedule IV, added in 2022, brought exotic species into the Act, which is how an animal with no Indian range is covered at all.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2017: what Schedule I protection means for a tortoise
5 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Biological Diversity Act, 2002
The Act is how India gives effect to the Convention on Biological Diversity at home, and it splits the work across three tiers, with the committee in the village at the bottom of it.
Who does what
National level
- National Biodiversity Authority, a statutory body in Chennai
- Decides access by foreign entities and fixes benefit sharing
State and UT level
- State Biodiversity Boards and UT Biodiversity Councils
- Regulate commercial use by Indian entities
Local level
- Over 2.76 lakh Biodiversity Management Committees, set up by local bodies
- Prepare People's Biodiversity Registers
- The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023 made most offences civil rather than criminal, and Rules followed in 2024.
- The Environment Minister has asked States to make their 2.76 lakh Biodiversity Management Committees functional rather than merely constituted.
- He also asked that People's Biodiversity Registers become dynamic planning instruments rather than one time records.
- State rules are to be aligned with the 2023 amendment and the 2024 Rules.
5 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Access and benefit sharing
The promise of the Act is that anyone who profits from a biological resource pays something back to the place it came from, and the National Biodiversity Authority says those payouts have now crossed ₹200 crore.
- Much of the recent money came from seed companies paying for vegetable seed bought in open markets, where no provider could be identified.
- It was shared out among State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils by each State's crop area, rather than reaching a community directly.
- Under Section 32(2) of the Act, a board must spend what it receives on conservation, People's Biodiversity Registers, Biodiversity Heritage Sites and community livelihoods.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2023: Biodiversity Management Committees, the Nagoya Protocol and collection fees