The
Central Government has been encouraging the States to constitute State
Biodiversity
SBB is a body corporate set up by the State Government in accordance with the provisions of Section 22 of the Biological Diversity Act. The SBB consists of a chairperson and not more than five ex-officio members to be appointed by the State Government to represent concerned Departments of the States, and not more than five expert members on the subject.
The main functions of the State Biodiversity Boards are to advise the State Governments on matters relating to biodiversity, and to regulate by granting approval for commercial utilization or bio-survey and bio-utilisation of any biological resource by Indians.
Every local body is required to constitute a Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC) within its area for the purpose of promoting conservation, sustainable use and documentation of biological diversity. The local level BMC would comprise of maximum seven members to be nominated by the local body of whom not less than one third would be women and not less than 18% belonging to SC/ST. have been set up so far in six states.
Some of the recent actions taken up to implement the conservation related provisions of the BD include the following:
61 of the Act was issued on 17.11.08. An amendment to this notification authorising forest officers for this purpose was issued on 1.8.09.
for their comments. On receipt of comments from the states, notification were issued for Himachal Pradesh on 19.3.2009, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala on 23.4.2009, and Orissa, and on 5thOctober 2009.
have been requested to send their views on the areas of biodiversity importance, which could be notified as Biodiversity Heritage Sites under Section 37. The NBA is in the process of developing draft rules for management of these sites.
have been requested to identify any biodiversity rich areas threatened by overuse or neglect as per Section 36 (2), and NBA has been requested to prepare gridlines for management of these areas.
In order to strengthen implementation of the Act and to build capacity of the institution structures involved in its implementation, a project identification form (PIF) and project Preparation grant were prepared for accessing funds from Global Environment Facility (GEF) for a Full Scale Project through United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The proposal has been approved by GEF in May 2009 with GEF contribution of USD 4 million. This is the first national project to have been approved by GEF on access and benefit sharing. The NBA is now in the process of developing the full project.
The Ministry has also developed a project with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for USD one million for strengthening the implementation of the Act.
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