It has been two decades since the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (BD Act, 2002) of India was enacted
by Parliament to conserve biological diversity, to ensure sustainable use of its components and fair and
equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of biological resources and knowledge associated
with them. For meeting the various purposes of this Act, provisions have been kept in the Act for
making fund available to the State Biodiversity Boards. According to the Act, a fund called the State
Biodiversity Fund can be constituted, where the funds shall be credited through three broad sources.
Such fund can be utilised for the various purposes as elaborated in the Act.
A study is done to assess the status of fund availability with the State Biodiversity Boards
– be it through allocation by the respective state governments or through financial assistance received
from the National Biodiversity Authority. The study has also looked upon the various utilisation of
such funds under different components. In order of doing so, two consecutive financial years (FY 2021-
22 and FY 2022-23) have been studied.
The study along with the inferences drawn are completely based on the information received from
the various state biodiversity boards under the Right to Information Act, 2005.