Chennai, June 6 -- The union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in collaboration with the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Quality Council of India (QCI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) India, on Saturday launched the world's first ever dedicated Voluntary Certification Scheme for Incentivization of Access and Benefit Sharing (VCS-I-ABS) under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
With this, India became the first country among the 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to operationalise a dedicated Voluntary Certification Scheme on Access and Benefit Sharing.
The scheme was prepared following multi-stakeholder consultations and developed with financial support from the...