Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act 2023

The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act 2023 received the assent of the President of India on 3 August 2023, amending the parent Biological Diversity Act 2002, which itself gave domestic effect to India's obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and ratified by India in 1994. The 2002 Act was anchored in the CBD's three objectives — conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources (access and benefit-sharing, or ABS). The 2023 amendment was further informed by the Nagoya Protocol on ABS, which India ratified in 2014, and by domestic pressure from the indigenous medicine sector and the seed and traditional-knowledge industries. The amending Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2021, referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, and passed by both Houses in the 2023 Monsoon Session.

The Act preserves the three-tier institutional architecture of the 2002 framework: the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) headquartered in Chennai, the State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) at the state level, and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) at the level of local self-government bodies. Under the procedural scheme, foreign nationals, non-resident Indians, and bodies corporate incorporated outside India must obtain prior approval of the NBA before accessing biological resources for research, commercial utilisation, or bio-survey and bio-utilisation. Indian citizens and Indian-registered entities are required to give prior intimation to the relevant SBB. A central change introduced by the 2023 Act is the exemption of codified traditional knowledge and registered AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Homoeopathy) medical practitioners from the requirement to share benefits or seek prior approval for accessing biological resources.

The amendment also recalibrates the regulatory triggers for cultivated medicinal plants and removes the bar on certain users. It exempts users of codified traditional knowledge and registered AYUSH practitioners from the ABS provisions, narrows the definition of who must seek NBA approval, and clarifies that benefit-sharing applies principally to those accessing resources for commercial utilisation and research. The Act provides that intellectual property applications based on Indian biological resources require NBA approval before grant of the IP right rather than before filing, easing the burden on patent applicants. It also empowers the central government to specify the conditions for benefit-sharing through rules, and it brings cultivated medicinal plants outside the scope of certain provisions to encourage domestic cultivation over wild harvesting.

The legislative passage was steered by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) under Minister Bhupender Yadav, with the Bill referred to a Joint Committee chaired by Sanjay Jaiswal in 2022. Industry bodies including the AYUSH sector, seed companies, and pharmaceutical firms had lobbied for relaxation since the high-profile NBA enforcement actions of the 2010s, notably proceedings against companies over alleged biopiracy of Indian genetic resources. The decriminalisation provisions replace criminal penalties of imprisonment under the 2002 Act with monetary penalties ranging from one lakh to fifty lakh rupees, adjudicated by a designated official rather than prosecuted in court, aligning with the Government of India's broader decriminalisation agenda reflected in instruments such as the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act 2023.

The Act must be distinguished from adjacent instruments. It is not the Nagoya Protocol itself but the domestic mechanism through which India implements ABS obligations; the Protocol sets international standards while the Act and NBA guidelines operationalise them within Indian jurisdiction. It is also distinct from the Forest (Conservation) Act and its 2023 amendment, which governs diversion of forest land rather than access to genetic resources, and from the Wild Life (Protection) Act, which regulates trade in species rather than the commercial use of genetic and biochemical components. Practitioners should not conflate the BMC-level People's Biodiversity Registers, which document local knowledge, with the codified traditional knowledge that the amendment exempts from ABS.

The amendment attracted sustained criticism from conservation scientists and community-rights advocates. The Joint Parliamentary Committee received dissent notes arguing that the exemptions for AYUSH practitioners and cultivated plants would dilute benefit-sharing owed to indigenous and local communities under CBD Article 8(j), and that decriminalisation would weaken deterrence against biopiracy. Critics also contended that easing the prior-approval timeline for IP applications could permit appropriation of Indian resources before the NBA scrutinises the claim. Defenders countered that the 2002 regime had become an obstacle to legitimate domestic research and the traditional-medicine economy, deterring investment without measurably advancing conservation. The constitutional and CBD-compliance questions raised in these debates remain live for litigation and for future rule-making by the MoEFCC.

For the working practitioner — whether a UPSC candidate preparing General Studies Paper III, a desk officer on environmental treaties, or a policy researcher on intellectual property and traditional knowledge — the Act exemplifies the tension between treaty obligations and domestic ease-of-doing-business reform. It illustrates how a state party translates CBD and Nagoya commitments into enforceable domestic law, how access and benefit-sharing regimes balance commercial users against community rights, and how decriminalisation reshapes environmental enforcement. Familiarity with the NBA's tiered approval mechanics and the precise scope of the 2023 exemptions is indispensable for analysing India's biodiversity governance and its position in international ABS negotiations.