What are PBRs? India’s Massive Undertaking for Documenting Local Knowledge of Biological Resource

19 May, 2025

People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBRs) and how digitalisation can strengthen their effectiveness for conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits.

By: Kunal Bharat, Forestry & Biodiversity Advisor, GIZ and Aravind Gopal, TERI School of Advance Studies

© GIZ/ Suddhabrata Chakraborty

What do people stand to gain from documenting their knowledge of local biological resources?

In some cases, the participatory process of documentation is just as impactful as the outcome itself. In Karnataka’s Kigga village, this process revealed an unexpected insight: large quantities of mosses were being harvested from local forests and sold in urban markets. The discovery prompted villagers to investigate market prices and organise sustainable harvesting practices while securing a greater share of the returns for the community.

A similar undertaking in 2024 by Kerala’s Thazhakara Gram Panchayat, highlighted the significant decline in species like the Indian black turtle, paving the way for extensive community-led conservation efforts and guiding village-level developmental initiatives. Such documentation also plays a vital role in preserving and passing on traditional knowledge to the next generation, ensuring it remains a living part of the community's identity.

What is a PBR?

A People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR) is a communitydriven document that records comprehensive and multifaceted information on the local biodiversity of the region and the knowledge associated with these biological resources. More than just species catalogues, a PBR captures cultural practices, farming methods, seasonal observations, medicinal uses and leading practitioners of these medicine systems in the region.

The idea of participatory biodiversity documentation took shape in the early 1990s, led by the Indian Institute of Science and civil society partners. It was officially institutionalised in India with the Biological Diversity Act (BDA) in 2002, which created a decentralised three-tier structure – National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) and local-level Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs), with a key mandate of BMCs to create and maintain PBRs

The BDA 2002, BDA (Amendment) 2023 and related notifications, align with India’s commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol, viz. conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from its utilisation. And PBRs are envisaged to play a central role in achieving these objectives, serving multiple purposes:

  • Documenting biological resources and associated knowledge systems, empowering communities to assert rights over their ecological heritage.
  • Supporting Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) when local biodiversity is used for commercial or research purposes.
  • Informing conservation and land-use planning at local and state levels.
  • Aiding the protection of socio-culturally and ecologically significant Biodiversity Heritage Sites.

Indian judiciary has also recognised through various landmark cases, the vital role played by PBRs in identification and ensuring adequate compensation to benefit claimers as well as in conservation of biodiversity (Chandra Bhal Singh v. Union of India, 2016), and in the notification and protection of Biodiversity Heritage Sites (Kerala Sarppakavu Samraskhana Samiti v. State of Kerala, 2022).

What’s the status today?

As of 2024, India has prepared over 2.7 lakh (270,000) PBRs. It is a staggering achievement for a multilingual, ecologically diverse country like India.
However, many PBRs suffer from issues like poor data quality, lack of updates, inconsistent formats, limited community participation, and their potential remains under-realised. In physical formats, PBRs remain difficult to use in environmental planning or to implement fair benefit-sharing under ABS provisions.

Role of Digitalisation

Addressing the challenges with PBRs, India has initiated the development of a national electronic People’s Biodiversity Register (ePBR) framework towards unifying and simplifying the process of collection and use of biodiversity data and associated knowledge. The framework comprising digital tools and supporting institutional processes aims to strengthen and simplify the implementation of ABS.
With India’s recently updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (2024-30) aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the implementation of for e-PBRs assumes even more significance – aiding in effectuating community knowledge, participation, and equitable sharing of benefits.

Operationalising an effective national e-PBR framework would also entail establishing necessary safeguards such as: 

  •  Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the involved communities
  •  Data protection in line with the extant digital laws in India
  •  Protection of bio-cultural and intellectual property rights
  •  Balancing the right to privacy and right to information of diverse stakeholders 

The Indo-German technical cooperation project ‘Development of National Framework for Electronic People's Biodiversity Registers (e-PBR) in India’, implemented by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) as part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI), aims to support the development and operationalisation of this national framework.

Through ensuring inclusive participation, robust safeguards, and sustained policy support, a national e-PBR framework can serve as a vital tool for aligning local biodiversity management with national strategies and global biodiversity targets and realising the full potential and mandate of this massive initiative.

© GIZ/ Pradeep Mehta

More about the project: Development of National Framework for Electronic People's Biodiversity Registers in India 

References: 

Convention on Biological Diversity https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/cop-15/cop-15-dec-04- en.pdf

Case Judgements:

  1. Kerala Sarppakavu Samraskhana Samiti v. State of Kerala, 2022 https://www.casemine.com/judgement/in/652ae5266d59b07c9cba8f40
  2. Chandra Bhal Singh v. Union of India, 2016 https://www.casemine.com/judgement/in/6385d22bdd275d4596e16901 

Gadgil, M. (2000). People's Biodiversity Registers: Lessons Learnt. Environment Development and Sustainability. 2. 323-332. 10.1023/A:1011438729881. http://repository.ias.ac.in/64107/1/13_PUB.pdf

Gadgil, M. et. al. (2006). Ecology is for the People: A Methodology Manual for People's Biodiversity Register.

National Biodiversity Authority – Public information on PBRs (last updated 23/01/2025) http://nbaindia.org/content/105/30/1/pbr.html

 

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