The Convention on Biological Diversity: A Global Commitment to Biodiversity Conservation

Every drug that emerges from a rainforest plant, every crop variety bred using ancient seed stock, every cosmetic derived from a traditional herbal remedy – all of these draw from the same vast reservoir: the planet’s biological diversity. For decades, this reservoir was treated as a free-for-all, with richer nations and corporations extracting genetic resources from biodiverse countries with little accountability and no obligation to share the resulting profits. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted in 1992, was the world’s formal answer to this problem. It remains the most comprehensive international legal framework governing biodiversity – covering not just conservation, but also who owns nature, who benefits from it, and on what terms.

What is the Convention on Biological Diversity? 🔗

The CBD is a multilateral treaty adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – commonly called the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1992. It entered into force on 29 December 1993 and today counts 193 parties, making it one of the most widely ratified environmental treaties in history. Notably, the United States remains the only UN member state that has signed but not ratified it.

Before the CBD, biological resources were broadly treated as the “common heritage of mankind” – a concept that effectively meant anyone could access and exploit them freely. With the CBD, sovereign rights of states were formally recognised over their biological resources, fundamentally shifting that legal position. Countries were no longer passive custodians of nature; they became rights-holders with authority to regulate access to their genetic wealth.

The three core objectives 🔗

The CBD rests on three equally important pillars, each forming a legal obligation for its parties:

1. Conservation of biological diversity 🔗

This objective covers biodiversity at every level – genes, species, and ecosystems. Parties are required to develop national strategies, plans, and programmes for biodiversity conservation. This includes establishing protected areas, restoring degraded ecosystems, and controlling invasive species. The CBD’s conservation mandate is not merely aspirational; parties must integrate conservation into all sectors of development, from agriculture and forestry to urban planning.

2. Sustainable use of biological components 🔗

The CBD does not call for locking nature away from human use. It explicitly recognises that ecosystems, species, and genetic resources should benefit humanity – but in a manner that avoids long-term decline. Biodiversity must be used sustainably, ensuring that benefits flow to people without driving resource depletion. This principle directly informs fields such as sustainable forestry, responsible fisheries management, and pharmaceutical bioprospecting.

3. Fair and equitable sharing of benefits 🔗

This third objective is arguably the most legally significant – and the most contested. When a company uses a genetic resource (say, a medicinal plant) to develop a commercial product, the CBD requires that a fair share of the resulting benefits flows back to the country and communities from which the resource originated. This is called Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). The mechanism requires that access be granted on mutually agreed terms (MAT) and subject to prior informed consent (PIC) of the provider country and, where relevant, its local and indigenous communities.

Sovereign rights over genetic resources 🔗

One of the CBD’s most consequential legal contributions is the reaffirmation of the sovereign rights of states over their biological resources under Article 3. This directly overturned the “common heritage” doctrine that previously governed genetic resources. Under that older framework, biodiverse countries – often developing nations – could watch their plants, seeds, and microorganisms be collected, taken abroad, patented, and commercialised without any obligation of return.

Article 15 of the CBD operationalises this sovereignty. It provides that access to a country’s genetic resources requires the prior informed consent of that country and must occur on mutually agreed terms. This means that any researcher, company, or institution seeking to use, say, a wild rice variety from India or a medicinal herb from a forest community in the Northeast must first obtain consent and negotiate benefit-sharing arrangements. Without this, such access constitutes what is commonly known as biopiracy – the unauthorised appropriation of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge.

Prior informed consent and mutually agreed terms 🔗

Prior Informed Consent (PIC) means that before any genetic resource is accessed, the authority responsible – whether a national government body or an indigenous community – must be fully informed about the purpose of access, how the resource will be used, and what benefits are expected to arise, and must formally grant its approval. The consent must be given before access, and the approving authority must have enough information to make an informed decision about the conditions of access and benefit sharing.

Mutually Agreed Terms (MAT) refer to the negotiated contractual arrangement between the user and the provider, setting out the specific conditions – monetary or non-monetary benefits, timelines, intellectual property rights, and dispute resolution mechanisms. Together, PIC and MAT form the procedural backbone of the CBD’s ABS regime, later strengthened through the Nagoya Protocol.

Traditional knowledge and indigenous communities 🔗

Among the CBD’s most forward-looking provisions is Article 8(j), which recognises the vital role of indigenous and local communities in biodiversity conservation. It requires each contracting party to, as far as possible, respect, preserve, and maintain the knowledge, innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities that embody traditional lifestyles relevant to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.

Traditional knowledge (TK) in the CBD context refers to knowledge developed and passed down through generations – information about the properties of plants, sustainable harvesting practices, ecological relationships, and conservation techniques. This knowledge is typically developed from centuries of experience, adapted to local cultures and environments, transmitted orally, and collectively owned – expressed through stories, cultural values, rituals, and day-to-day resource management practices.

Article 8(j) also calls for the equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of such knowledge with the communities that hold it. Importantly, this applies not just when the genetic resource itself is accessed, but when the associated traditional knowledge – for instance, a tribal community’s documented use of a plant for treating fever – forms the basis for commercial research and development.

However, it must be noted that Article 8(j) does not create a binding enforceable right for communities. The provision is aspirational in nature – it encourages states to promote the wider application of traditional knowledge with the approval and involvement of the knowledge-holding communities, but leaves no directly enforceable right for those communities to participate in ABS decision-making. This gap between aspiration and enforcement remains a major critique of the CBD’s framework.

The Nagoya Protocol and the Cartagena Protocol 🔗

The CBD has two major supplementary agreements that strengthen specific aspects of its framework.

The Nagoya Protocol (2010) 🔗

Adopted in Nagoya, Japan on 29 October 2010, and entering into force on 12 October 2014, the Nagoya Protocol provides a legally binding framework for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. It builds on Articles 15 and 8(j) of the CBD by creating specific obligations for user countries – not just provider countries – and by including traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources within the ABS framework. It makes PIC and MAT more concrete, requiring parties to put in place compliance measures and to report on access and benefit-sharing transactions.

The Cartagena Protocol (2000) 🔗

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety focuses on the safe handling, transport, and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) – organisms whose genetic material has been altered through modern biotechnology. It establishes an Advance Informed Agreement (AIA) procedure and applies the Precautionary Principle, meaning that protective action can be taken even in the absence of complete scientific certainty about harm.

India’s implementation of the CBD 🔗

India ratified the CBD in 1994 and enacted the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 as its primary domestic instrument to fulfil CBD obligations. The Act was built on the CBD’s recognition of sovereign rights of states over their biological resources and aims at conservation, sustainable use, and fair and equitable benefit sharing.

The Act set up a three-tier institutional structure. At the national level, the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), headquartered in Chennai, is the statutory body responsible for ABS decisions, including PIC for access by foreign entities and approval of intellectual property applications based on Indian biological resources or traditional knowledge. Below the NBA are State Biodiversity Boards (SBBs) in each state, and at the grassroots level, Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) established for each local body across the country. Over 31,574 BMCs have been created across India – each responsible for documenting local biodiversity and traditional knowledge and serving as the first point of engagement for any access request.

India, as one of the world’s most biodiverse countries – home to around 7-8% of all recorded species and four of the thirty-four globally identified biodiversity hotspots – has a significant stake in an effective ABS regime. However, recent developments have drawn concern. India’s ABS Regulations 2025 have been criticised for reducing community participation to mere consultation rather than ensuring free, prior and informed consent as required by the Nagoya Protocol and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – a departure from the spirit of the CBD’s community-centred approach.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework 🔗

The CBD’s most recent strategic milestone came at COP15 held in Montreal, Canada in December 2022. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) was adopted, setting 23 targets to be achieved by 2030. The most prominent is the 30×30 target – protecting 30% of the world’s land and ocean areas by 2030. The KMGBF also sets Target 13 on ABS, requiring measures to facilitate access to genetic resources globally while ensuring fair benefit sharing, including of associated traditional knowledge on PIC and MAT terms. Target 20 specifically calls for traditional knowledge to guide biodiversity decision-making, with the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples and local communities.

The Framework acknowledges indigenous peoples and local communities as custodians of biodiversity and partners in conservation, restoration, and sustainable use, requiring that their rights, knowledge, and practices be respected, documented, and preserved with their free, prior and informed consent. This is a significant political commitment, even if enforcement mechanisms remain weak.

Why the CBD matters for IP law students 🔗

From an intellectual property perspective, the CBD sits at the intersection of multiple legal regimes. The tension between the CBD’s ABS framework and the TRIPS Agreement (which governs patents under the WTO) is one of the most debated issues in international law. TRIPS does not require patent applicants to disclose the origin of genetic resources or proof of PIC – creating a loophole through which biopiracy can occur even in countries that have signed the CBD. The Nagoya Protocol has pushed for disclosure requirements, and countries like India have incorporated these into their national frameworks by requiring NBA approval before filing for patents based on biological resources or traditional knowledge obtained from India.

The CBD is also directly relevant to understanding plant variety protection. Genetic resources from wild plant populations are the foundation of modern plant breeding, and any legal framework governing plant varieties – including the UPOV Convention – must be read alongside the CBD’s ABS principles to understand who has rights over which genetic materials and on what terms.

What do you think? If a pharmaceutical company uses the traditional knowledge of a tribal community in Odisha to develop a blockbuster drug and patents it abroad, what legal tools does the CBD – and India’s domestic law – actually provide to that community to claim a share of the benefits? And given that Article 8(j) is largely non-binding, is the current international framework genuinely equipped to prevent biopiracy, or does it need a fundamentally stronger enforcement mechanism?

References

1. https://www.un.org/en/observances/biological-diversity-day/convention
2. https://arccjournals.com/journal/bhartiya-krishi-anusandhan-patrika/BKAP788
3. https://enb.iisd.org/negotiations/convention-biological-diversity-cbd
4. https://www.cbd.int/undb/media/factsheets/undb-factsheets-en-web.pdf
5. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/548841/
6. https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/lawp08/chapter/access-and-benefit-sharing-and-traditional-knowledge/
7. https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/TNC_IPs_LCs_TraditionalKnowledge.pdf
8. https://spicyip.com/2025/12/establishment-of-permanent-subsidiary-body-on-article-8j-of-the-cbd-a-new-direction-for-iplcs-and-traditional-knowledge-protection.html
9. https://jncc.gov.uk/our-work/convention-on-biological-diversity/
10. https://instituteofsustainabilitystudies.com/insights/lexicon/what-is-the-convention-on-biological-diversity-cbd/
11. https://www.drishtiias.com/to-the-points/paper3/biological-diversity-act-2002
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Diversity_Act,_2002
13. https://india.mongabay.com/2025/06/access-and-benefit-sharing-regulations-impinge-on-the-rights-of-local-communities-commentary/
14. https://iwgia.org/en/convention-on-biological-diversity-cbd/5405-iw-2024-cbd.html