MoEFCC and the National Biodiversity Authority launch a USD 4.88 million GEF-UNDP initiative in Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya, embedding conservation into local development plans and creating new livelihood pathways for forest communities.
NEW DELHI – India has launched a landmark five-year project aimed at making biodiversity conservation a central pillar of local governance — not an afterthought managed from above, but a community-owned commitment embedded in the very plans that govern village life.
The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) have jointly launched the project, titled 'Strengthening Institutional Capacities for Securing Biodiversity Conservation Commitments'. It is a trilateral initiative supported by the Government of India, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with a grant of USD 4.88 million covering the period 2025 to 2030.
At its core, the project seeks to green Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDPs) — the annual planning documents through which village councils allocate resources and set priorities. By formally incorporating biodiversity targets into these plans, the initiative aims to transform local governance bodies into active conservation actors, rather than passive bystanders to decisions made at the state or national level.
The project is anchored in two distinct but equally significant ecological zones. The first is the Sathyamangalam landscape in Tamil Nadu, situated at the confluence of the Western and Eastern Ghats — one of the world's recognised biodiversity hotspots. This area encompasses the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve, forming a vital wildlife corridor. The communities living along its forest fringes have been stewards of this landscape for generations, and the project aims to formally harness their ecological knowledge by channelling it into Gram Panchayat Development Plans.
The second landscape is Garo Hills in Meghalaya, home to the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve, Balpakram National Park and Siju Wildlife Sanctuary. This region presents a mosaic of government-managed forests and community reserve forests, making it an ideal setting for testing how conservation can be led and sustained by the communities most directly connected to it. In Meghalaya, Village Employment Councils (VECs) — the local governance equivalent of gram panchayats — will serve as the primary institutional vehicle for integrating biodiversity into development planning.
The project is structured around three interconnected objectives. The first is mainstreaming biodiversity into local development plans. This means strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) and building multi-stakeholder platforms at the landscape level that bring together forest departments, revenue authorities, elected representatives and civil society organisations to produce biodiversity plans that are genuinely community-owned and adequately funded.
The second pillar focuses on innovative financing. Conservation commitments are meaningless without the resources to sustain them. The project will activate Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) arrangements under India's biodiversity legislation, facilitate CSR co-financing from the private sector, and support the development of green micro-enterprises that generate direct, tangible livelihoods for communities as a reward for their conservation stewardship — making protection of biodiversity economically rational for those who bear its costs.
The third pillar is knowledge management and capacity building. Successful innovations from both landscapes will be systematically documented and made available for nationwide replication through NBA and MoEFCC platforms. A dedicated emphasis is placed on advancing the economic and governance roles of women, Scheduled Castes and tribal communities — recognising that biodiversity conservation in India is inseparable from questions of equity and inclusion.
The initiative advances several of India's most significant environmental and development commitments simultaneously. It supports the implementation of India's Updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP 2024–2030), contributes to the landmark 30x30 target of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — which calls for protecting 30 per cent of the world's land and oceans by 2030 — and aligns with India's Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement. It also feeds into the development visions of both Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya.
The governance model underpinning the project is explicitly bottom-up, with Panchayati Raj Institutions placed in a managerial, not merely consultative, role. It adopts what officials describe as a 'Whole-of-Government' and 'Whole-of-Society' approach — a recognition that securing India's biodiversity over the long term cannot be the responsibility of any single agency, but requires alignment across government departments, local institutions, civil society and the communities whose lives are most directly shaped by the health of the natural world around them.
