Section 3 in THE BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2023
3. Amendment of section 2.
In section 2 of the principal Act,—(i)for clause (a), the following clauses shall be substituted, namely:—(a) “access” means collecting, procuring or possessing any biological resource occurring in or obtained from India or traditional knowledge associated thereto, for the purposes of research or bio-survey or commercial utilisation;(aa)“benefit claimers” means the conservers of biological resources, their by-products, creators or holders of traditional knowledge associated thereto(excluding codified traditional knowledge only for Indians) and information relating to the use of such biological resources, innovations and practices associated with such use and application;’;(ii)in clause (b), after the words “biological diversity”, the words or“biodiversity” shall be inserted;(iii)for clause (c), the following clause shall be substituted, namely:—(c) “biological resources” include plants, animals, micro-organisms or parts of their genetic material and derivatives (excluding value added products), with actual or potential use or value for humanity, but does not include human genetic material;';(iv)after clause (e), the following clause shall be inserted, namely:—(ea) “codified traditional knowledge” means the knowledge derived from authoritative books specified in the First Schedule to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940;(v)after clause (f), the following clause shall be inserted, namely:—(fa) “derivative” means a naturally occurring biochemical compound or metabolism of biological resources, even if it does not contain functional units of heredity;(vi)after clause (g), the following clauses shall be inserted, namely:—(ga) “folk variety” means a cultivated variety of plant that was developed, grown and exchanged informally among farmers;(gb)“India” means the territory of India as referred to in Article 1 of the Constitution, its territorial waters, seabed and sub-soil underlying such waters, continental shelf, exclusive economic zone or any other maritime zone as refferred to in the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, Exclusive Economic Zone and Other Maritime ZonesAct, 1976, and the air space above its territory;(gc)“landrace” means primitive cultivar that was grown by ancient farmers and their successors;(vii)after clause (i), the following clause shall be inserted, namely:—(ia) “Member-Secretary” means the full time Secretary of the National Biodiversity Authority, or of the State Biodiversity Board, as the case may be;’.
