Biodiversity Act :

The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 is an Act enacted by the Parliament of India for the preservation of biological diversity in India, and provides mechanism for equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the use of traditional biological resources and knowledge. The Act was enacted to meet the obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), because India is a party of the convention.

People's Biodiversity Act :

One of the mandates of the Biodiversity Board is to prepare Peoples’ Biodiversity Registers (PBR) involving the local communities. The register shall contain comprehensive information on availability and knowledge of local biological resources, their medicinal or any other use or any other traditional knowledge associated with them. PBR is not simply a register with names of species and their distribution in a given area but it is a comprehensive data base recording peoples’ traditional knowledge and insight of the status, uses, history, ongoing changes and forces driving these changes on the biological diversity resources of their own localities. This will also provide information on the current utilization patterns of biodiversity, its economic benefits to the local communities. The registers form a baseline data for future management strategies required for the sustainable utilization of biodiversity in a decentralized manner. Further, it helps equitable sharing of benefits arising out of commercial utilization of biodiversity resources and knowledge on their uses. The Biodiversity Register offers conservation, protection of IPR and the traditional knowledge.