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India's Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Regime
When a seed company or a foreign government uses an Indian crop variety or animal germplasm commercially, Indian law makes it pay a share back to the places the resource came from. That is Access and Benefit Sharing. Two releases in August 2026 show the machinery at work: close to ₹3.79 crore on 9 August to 33 State and Union Territory boards and national institutes, then ₹2.82 crore on 22 August to 27 State Biodiversity Boards, 3 Union Territory councils and ICAR-IIHR, taking the National Biodiversity Authority's cumulative disbursements to ₹185 crore.
Last updated 27 August 20267 min read
Latest update
Added the 22 August 2026 release: ₹2.82 crore to 27 State boards, 3 UT councils and ICAR-IIHR, the first microbial-strain payment with a 30 percent institute share, and the cumulative total now at ₹185 crore (up from ₹166 crore).
- Access and Benefit Sharing
- National Biodiversity Authority
- Biological Diversity Act 2002
- Nagoya Protocol
- State Biodiversity Boards
- People's Biodiversity Registers
- Biodiversity Management Committees
- Kunming-Montreal framework
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