India Unveils National Red List Roadmap

1. Event Details:

• Introduced on: 10th August 2010.
• Date: 2025, International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World conservation congress in Abu Dhabi.
• Document Unveiled: Vision 202530 National RedList Assessment (NRLA) India.

2. Key Collaborating Agencies:

• Agricultural Zoology Division Zoological Survey of India (ZSI)
• Botanical Survey of India (BSI)
• IUCN-India and Indian Centre of Species Survival.

Biodiversity Significance of India:

• It is among 17 megadiverse countries in the world.
• Four biodiversity hotspots on earth, the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma, and Sundaland.
• It comprises almost 8 percent of world flora and about 7.5 percent of world fauna although it is only 2.4 percent of the world area.
• The endemic species are also high (28 percent of plants and more than 30 percent of animals).

4. Roadmap National RedList Purpose:

• To establish a national coordinated, scientific process of evaluating and tracking the conservation of the species in India.
• The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has been signed, and it complies with IUCN global standards, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF).

5. Goals and Outcomes:

• Primary Objective: Have national red data books on flora and fauna published by 2030.
• These will be used as a source of evidence-based conservation, policy formulation and reduction of the threat.
• The project focuses on recording the traditional knowledge and enhancing the accuracy of species identification.

6. Governance and Legal Context:

• Lead Agency: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
• Nodal Agencies: ZSI and BSI.
• Backed by well-established legal systems such as Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, which has been amended to match with CITES in 2022.