National ‘Red List’ Assessment Initiative:
India launched the five-year National Red List Assessment Initiative (2025-2030) to evaluate the conservation status of its flora and fauna, announced at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi.
- National ‘Red List’ Assessment Initiative aims to systematically identify and protect India’s most vulnerable species, in line with global environmental commitments, and IUCN standards.
- It will evaluate the extinction risk of approximately 11,000 species—including 7,000 flora and 4,000 fauna—to develop a National Red List.
- It will be spearheaded by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, with key implementing bodies including the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).
- It will fulfill Target 4 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), which calls for halting species extinction, protecting genetic diversity, and managing human-wildlife conflicts.
- As a signatory to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), India is obligated to monitor and conserve its biodiversity, and this assessment provides the essential scientific basis for that effort.
- Of the assessed fauna, 13.4% are threatened, 289 species are near threatened, and 13.8% are data deficient, with their conservation status unknown.
- India exhibits high endemism, with 79% of amphibians and 54.9% of reptiles found nowhere else in the wild.
