India to spend more than 2.5 times on biodiversity protection by 2030

New Delhi: India has committed to a UN body to enhance its budgetary support for biodiversity conservation by 2.5 times over the next six years, aiming to convert at least 30 per cent of its degraded land and sea areas, fit for flora and fauna.

The target was mentioned in the latest national biodiversity strategy and action plan, released on the sidelines of the ongoing 16^th Conference of Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity at Columbia.

Between 2017 and 2022, the Union government on an average spent over Rs 33,200 crore every year on biodiversity conservation.

The plan is to gradually increase the allocation so that more than Rs 81,600 crore could be utilised each year for species protection by 2029-30.

A key target is to restore 30 per cent areas of “degraded terrestrial, inland water and marine and coastal ecosystems” by 2030 to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions.

India - one of the world’s 17 mega-diverse countries – also faces five major threats to biodiversity. They are (1) land and sea use change (2) pollution (3) species overexploitation (4) climate change and (5) invasive alien species.

With the country hosting 7-8 per cent of the world’s recognised species within 2.4 per cent of the global land mass, the enhanced allocation will be used to execute 23 specific plans that are crucial to save biodiversity, says the document.

Adopted in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to protect the world’s biodiversity, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) requires countries to create a national biodiversity strategy and action plan for conserving and sustainably using biodiversity. India became a member of the CBD in 1994.

Countries are required to report their progress every four years through national reports. India’s new report is in sync with a global protocol known as Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that was adopted at the 15th UN Biodiversity Conference in Canada in 2022.