The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill 2021:
The Lok Sabha passed the contentious Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill 2021.
- Biodiversity refers to the variety of life forms that exist on the planet.
Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021:
- The Bill modifies the classification of entities and activities that require intimation, while also introducing exemptions to certain cases.
- The Bill suggests that approval will be required before the actual grant of the IPR, not during the application process.
- It seeks to exempt registered AYUSH medical practitioners and people accessing codified traditional knowledge, among others, from giving prior intimation to State biodiversity boards for accessing biological resources for certain purposes.
- The Bill removes the applicability of benefit sharing requirements from research, bio-survey, and bio-utilisation.
- The Bill, on the other hand, decriminalizes these offenses and introduces fines ranging from one lakh to fifty lakh rupees instead
