The Indian Express, 29 Nov, 2014
The government has notified the guidelines for sharing access and benefit arising from use of biological resources on November 21, four days after The Indian Express reported how the environment ministry was sitting on it for over three months.
It took the National Biodiversity Authority six years, 18 drafts and a prod from the National Green Tribunal to finalise the Guidelines for Access and Benefit Sharing this August.
The benefit-sharing slabs for companies are 0.1 per cent, 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent on annual ex-factory gross sales of a product, depending on if the sales are less than Rs 1 crore, between Rs 1-3 crore and above Rs 3 crore, respectively.
Fair and equitable sharing of benefits accrued from utilisation of genetic resources is a key objective of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted in June 1992 and ratified by 194 countries, including India. In compliance with the CBD, the Biological Diversity Act was passed in 2002 and the Biological Diversity Rules followed in 2004. It took another 10 years for the country to notify the guidelines for the quantum of revenue companies need to share, under the Act, with local communities and for biodiversity conservation.
A wide range of industries — biotech, pharma, forestry, herbal, sugar, distilleries, food processing, soya, textile, fisheries, sericulture etc — use biological resources. Globally, the potential value of biological diversity and genetic resources is pegged at around $1 trillion. India can collect an estimated Rs 20,000-25,000 crore annually as benefit under the notified guidelines. This money would go to the National and State Biodiversity Funds and to communities from whom such resources or knowledge have been accessed by the companies.
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