Give & take: Towards a better future for nature

HYDERABAD:  Sustainability has a new name: Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) mechanism. Thanks to this, a park Rangareddy’s Yelawarthy village will get a barbed fence to protect saplings from being eaten by cattle, Jangaon Municipality will paint walls in the city with messages of biodiversity conservation and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation will beautify its parks. All this will be possible with the money received from private companies that utilised natural resources from the jurisdiction of these government bodies. These resources are mango from Yelawarthy, rice from Jangaon and a host of resources from Greater Hyderabad including air, water, soil samples, pepper, garlic, turmeric and moringa.  

Natural resources are not free-for-all and as per the ABS mechanism, anyone who wants to exploit any natural resource for commercial purpose or even for research, must sign an agreement to share a small part of the financial benefit they obtain from the resource. Depending on who is using the resource, fees levied ranges from 0.1-0.5 per cent of the annual gross ex-factory sale of the products, minus the government taxes.

Natural resources do not just mean medicinal plants, trees or animals but includes everything under the sun, including insects, bacteria and virus. For example, ABS even applies to biotechnology, pharmaceutical or bio-pesticide firms that collect bacteria or viruses; ayurvedic and cosmetic firms that use medicinal plants or furniture companies that use timber.

According to the information provided by the Telangana State Biodiversity Board (TSBB), in the last couple of years, at least 30 Biodiversity Management Committees (BMC) formed at the village, municipality and municipal corporation levels have benefited from close to `4.5 lakh due to the ABS mechanism. Apart from this, the BMC formed under the GHMC had recently received `7.7 lakh as companies such as L’Oreal, Bharat Biotech and DCM Shriram used natural resources from Hyderabad.

“BMCs have a major role to play in this as they have to maintain a record of all the natural resources under them and also keep a tab on who is utilising them. As there is monetary benefit involved due to ABS, they are much more actively participating, which ensures better documentation and protection of biodiversity as well as sustainable utilisation of natural resources,” a TSBB official told Express.