India unveils national ‘Red List’ roadmap at IUCN Congress to strengthen bodiversity conservation

“The initiative marks a major step toward a comprehensive framework for assessing and conserving India’s rich flora and fauna. The Red List will guide conservation strategy till 2030, helping identify endangered species and strengthen evidence-based protection efforts” Kirti Vardhan Singh

Abu Dabi: India has launched its National Red List Roadmap at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi, marking a major milestone in the nation’s commitment to biodiversity conservation and environmental stewardship.

Unveiling the roadmap, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Kirti Vardhan Singh, said the vision document reflects India’s extraordinary efforts in biodiversity documentation, threat assessment, and species conservation.

Presenting India’s Vision 2025–2030 for the National Red List Assessment (NRLA) the Minister said this vision outlines our roadmap for a nationally coordinated, inclusive and science-based system to assess and monitor the conservation status of our species.

“To fulfil our commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), India has launched the National Red List Assessment initiative, aligned with IUCN global standards”, Singh stated.

The Minister further laid stress on the important role of documentation of traditional knowledge in biodiversity conservation.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant, animal, and fungal species. Established by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1964, it assesses species based on criteria such as population size, habitat range, rate of decline, and threats.

Explaining about the document, he said India stands proudly among the world’s 17 megadiverse countries, home to four of the 36 global biodiversity hotspots: the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, Indo-Burma, and Sundaland.

India occupies only 2.4% of the world’s land area, it harbours nearly 8% of the global flora and 7.5% of global fauna, with 28% of the plants and over 30% of the animals being endemic.

India has long upheld robust legal frameworks for protection of biodiversity, foremost among them, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, recently amended in 2022 to extend protection to species listed under CITES appendices, he stated.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress, the world’s foremost international event focused on nature conservation kicked off in Abu Dhabi, with more than 1,400 Member organisations determine the most pressing issues in nature conservation and actions to address them to help guide humanity’s relationship with our planet.