Communities Get Dues After Industry Cashes in on Soil Bacteria
Profit First, People Later — ABS Payout Exposes the Pattern
New Delhi: The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) is celebrating what it calls a major stride in India’s Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) mechanism, announcing the release of ₹5.34 crore to around 85 Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) in Maharashtra. On the surface, it reads like a win for the long-overlooked village and municipal committees in Wada tehsil, Palghar district, and within the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which have spent years protecting local plants, animals and ecosystems, who are finally receiving money for protecting biological resources that private companies profit from. But this payment also raises an obvious question: why did money start flowing only after the biological resources they protect turned out to be profitable? Why did it take commercial exploitation for local custodians of biodiversity to be recognised at all?
According to the official statement, the funds stem from a case in which a private company collected soil microorganisms — specifically bacteria of the Bacillus genus — from local areas and later used them to develop probiotic products. Only once the commercial product succeeded did the ABS mechanism step in to ensure that a share of the benefits reached the people from whose lands those biological resources were taken.
For readers unfamiliar with the term, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) is a legal system meant to make sure that when companies or researchers use biological resources — plants, animals, herbs, microbes or traditional knowledge — the local communities that protect and maintain those resources receive a fair share of the benefits. In theory, ABS ensures justice. In practice, communities have waited for years to see anything beyond promises.
Officials say that nearly 15% of ABS applications in India are now related to microorganisms. In simpler words, tiny organisms in the soil — invisible to the naked eye — are beginning to generate visible money. This trend is being celebrated as proof that “micro” organisms can produce “macro” benefits for farmers, tribal groups and local bodies. The celebration, however, also reveals the uncomfortable truth: local people are recognised only when their natural resources can be monetised.
The NBA’s latest payout follows an earlier release of ₹2.56 crore to 108 BMCs and seven institutions in the state. With this new transfer, India’s total ABS disbursements have crossed ₹116 crore. On paper, the country is now a global leader in implementing the ABS mechanism. In reality, the story is still developing. Important questions remain unanswered: Did communities receive a meaningful share, or only a symbolic one? Will money continue to flow regularly, or only when a company turns a profit? And can the ABS system really prevent the exploitation of biological resources?
There is no dispute that the latest transfer of funds is a positive step. In villages where BMCs were set up because the Biodiversity Act required it — not because anyone expected revenue — the sudden arrival of crores is bound to shift perceptions about why documentation, conservation and traditional knowledge matter. It may, in time, bring a welcome reversal to the decades-long phenomenon where corporations profited from local biological resources while the people safeguarding them were left outside the economic value chain.
But even as the cheques are distributed through the Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board, the structural imbalance remains visible. Communities did not receive this money because the system finally worked; they received it because a microorganism made it commercially impossible to ignore them. If this renewed attention to the ABS mechanism helps prevent future exploitation, the payout will mark a turning point. If it becomes a one-time showpiece release, it will merely confirm the cynicism that biodiversity continues to be valued only when it becomes profitable.
For now, the money has landed — and that alone makes this development newsworthy. What happens next will decide whether the custodians of biodiversity continue to receive their rightful share, or whether their compensation remains tied to the market value of whatever living organism industry discovers beneath their feet.
– global bihari bureau
