By Deepak Parvatiyar*
Alien Species Spread as Red List Gaps Persist
Forest Gains, Species Loss? India’s Biodiversity Puzzle
Government reports reveal expanding ecological threats and gaps in extinction data
India’s forests, wetlands and agricultural landscapes are facing a silent but accelerating ecological crisis. Findings from India’s Seventh National Report submitted to the Convention on Biological Diversity indicate that invasive alien species are spreading across large parts of the country’s ecosystems, raising fresh concerns about biodiversity loss and the long-term risk of species extinction. While conservation policies and institutional mechanisms continue to expand, scientists warn that India still lacks comprehensive Red List assessments for most species, making it difficult to determine how close many plants and animals may already be to disappearing.
The findings appear in the report prepared under the leadership of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which periodically evaluates India’s progress in protecting biodiversity under the global treaty. Compiled with scientific inputs from agencies including the Zoological Survey of India, the report offers one of the most detailed official snapshots yet of the country’s ecological trends. Yet a careful reading also reveals a troubling reality: despite decades of conservation programmes and expanding governance frameworks, India still lacks systematic scientific assessments for thousands of species that may already be under threat.
At the centre of the concern is the growing spread of invasive alien species—plants and organisms introduced from outside their native habitats that can rapidly dominate ecosystems. Across India’s landscapes, species such as Lantana camara, Parthenium hysterophorus, Prosopis juliflora and Eichhornia crassipes are widely recognised as major ecological disruptors. These species compete aggressively with native vegetation, alter soil chemistry, suppress regeneration of indigenous plants and reshape habitats that sustain diverse wildlife.
In many forest regions, Lantana camara has already formed dense thickets that block sunlight and prevent the natural regeneration of native trees and shrubs. Grasslands and agricultural landscapes are increasingly affected by Parthenium hysterophorus, often called Congress grass, which spreads rapidly across disturbed land and reduces the diversity of local plant communities. In arid and semi-arid ecosystems, Prosopis juliflora—originally introduced for land reclamation and fuelwood—has taken over large tracts of grazing land, displacing native grasses vital for both wildlife and pastoral livelihoods. Freshwater ecosystems have also been transformed, as Eichhornia crassipes, commonly known as water hyacinth, spreads across lakes and wetlands, choking waterways and reducing oxygen levels essential for aquatic life.
Such ecological changes, scientists warn, can gradually erode biodiversity even when forest cover or vegetation appears stable on the surface. As invasive species spread, they often simplify ecosystems, replacing diverse native communities with monocultures that support far fewer insects, birds and mammals.
Yet measuring how these changes translate into extinction risks remains one of the weakest areas of biodiversity monitoring. The Red List Index, a key global indicator used to track overall extinction risk for species, is currently available for only a limited portion of India’s biodiversity. According to official data cited in the national report, the index has so far been calculated primarily for mammals using historical assessments published by the Zoological Survey of India in 1994 and later updates in 2017. The value reported on India’s national sustainable development dashboard stands at 0.62 for mammals in 2017, reflecting trends in extinction risk within that group.
However, the index cannot yet be calculated for most other groups of species because their conservation status has not been evaluated repeatedly using comparable scientific criteria. Without such repeated assessments, changes in extinction risk over time remain difficult to measure.
Recognising this gap, the government has launched a National Red List Assessment Project covering the period from 2025 to 2030. The initiative aims to evaluate approximately 11,000 priority species of India’s flora and fauna using internationally recognised standards developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The most important deliverable of the project will be the preparation of updated national Red Data Books by 2030, creating a comprehensive scientific reference for conservation planning and threat mitigation.
The need for such assessments is particularly significant in a country that hosts nearly eight per cent of the world’s recorded species despite occupying only about 2.4 per cent of its land area. This biological richness ranges from the Himalayan mountains and tropical forests to grasslands, wetlands and coastal ecosystems. But these landscapes are also experiencing increasing pressures from habitat loss, pollution, climate change and biological invasions.
At the same time, India’s environmental accounts reveal a more complex ecological picture. According to environmental accounting released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the country’s forest cover expanded by more than 17,400 square kilometres between 2010-11 and 2021-22, reaching about 7.15 lakh square kilometres—roughly 21.76 per cent of the national geographical area. During the same period, the growing stock of forests, which measures the volume of living trees, increased by over 305 million cubic metres, indicating improved forest conditions in several regions.
These figures come from India’s environmental-economic accounting exercise conducted under the international framework known as the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting. The framework, adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2021, aims to integrate ecological data into national economic statistics by measuring the value of ecosystem services—the benefits people derive from nature, such as clean water, timber, pollination and climate regulation.
India’s forest accounts are organised into four categories: physical asset accounts that track the area of forest cover, extent accounts that record the distribution of ecosystems, condition accounts that measure ecosystem quality and service accounts that estimate the economic value of benefits derived from forests.
These accounts suggest that the economic contribution of forests remains significant. Government estimates indicate that provisioning services from forests—including timber and non-timber forest products—rose from ₹30.72 thousand crore in 2011-12 to ₹37.93 thousand crore in 2021-22. Within this total, however, the value of timber increased substantially while the value of non-timber forest products declined by about 15 per cent during the same period, a trend that could affect forest-dependent communities that rely heavily on such resources.
Even more striking is the estimated value of regulating services linked to carbon retention. According to the environmental accounts, the value attributed to carbon retention services increased by more than 51 per cent between 2015-16 and 2021-22, reaching ₹620.97 thousand crore and highlighting the role of forests in climate change mitigation.
Yet scientists caution that improvements in forest area or ecosystem valuation do not automatically guarantee biodiversity security. Forest landscapes dominated by invasive plants or monocultures may support far fewer native species than intact ecosystems. Without systematic monitoring of species populations, the apparent gains in forest extent may still mask bigger ecological changes.
Alongside these ecological assessments, India has also expanded its institutional framework for managing biological resources and sharing the benefits arising from their use. Earlier this year, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change submitted the country’s first national report on the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The report, covering the period from November 2017 to December 2025, outlines the functioning of India’s Access and Benefit Sharing system under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The framework operates through a three-tier institutional structure comprising the National Biodiversity Authority at the national level, State Biodiversity Boards and Biodiversity Management Committees at the local level.
According to official figures, more than 2,76,653 Biodiversity Management Committees have been established across the country to strengthen community participation in biodiversity governance and the sharing of benefits derived from biological resources.
During the reporting period, authorities issued 12,830 approvals for activities involving biological resources, including research, bio-survey, commercial utilisation, intellectual property applications and technology transfers. These approvals generated ₹216.31 crore in benefit-sharing contributions through the National Biodiversity Authority, of which ₹139.69 crore has been distributed to local communities, farmers and traditional knowledge holders. State Biodiversity Boards and Union Territory Biodiversity Councils generated an additional ₹51.96 crore through approvals granted for the commercial use of biological resources by Indian entities.
India has also published 3,556 internationally recognised certificates of compliance on the Access and Benefit Sharing Clearing-House, representing more than sixty per cent of the global total and reflecting the country’s emphasis on transparency in the regulation of biological resources.
Beyond financial benefits, hundreds of approvals have included non-monetary provisions such as technology transfer, training programmes and collaborative research initiatives. Government data also indicate that 395 approvals incorporated such non-monetary benefits, while nationwide awareness and capacity-building programmes trained more than 2,56,393 individuals through 3,724 workshops and over 600 related initiatives.
Authorities also reported receiving 41 formal declarations relating to the use of foreign biological resources and associated traditional knowledge under updated biodiversity rules, reflecting efforts to monitor the international exchange and utilisation of genetic material.
Despite these expanding institutions and governance frameworks, conservation scientists argue that administrative progress cannot substitute for detailed scientific knowledge about species populations. Biodiversity protection ultimately depends on understanding which species are declining, how quickly those declines are occurring and which ecosystems are most vulnerable.
Until the nationwide Red List assessments evaluate the roughly 11,000 priority species identified in India’s report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, much of the country’s biodiversity policy will continue to operate with an incomplete map of ecological risk. In a nation celebrated for its extraordinary biological richness, the possibility that declines are unfolding faster than they are being measured may be the most unsettling finding of all.
*Senior journalist
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