Writeshop to develop curriculum for Training of Trainer on Biodiversity Management Committees

08 Nov, 2019

Biodiversity Management Committees (BMC) constituted as per the 41(1) of the Biological Diversity Act 2002 at every local body have regulatory functions to support the objectives of the Act in every village, block, taluka and districts. Besides facilitating the ABS process, BMCs document People’s Biodiversity Registers for their jurisdiction. Functions of BMC is quite complicated and are technical that calls for sustained capacity-building programmes to support its operationalisation. There are lakhs of BMCs in India, capacity building and training of BMCs will require a large number of well-trained human resources and partnership with training institutes or NGOs to support the State Biodiversity Boards to fulfil their mandates of providing technical support to the BMCs.

The Access and Benefit Sharing Partnership Project in partnership with the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), Chennai conducted a 3-day writeshop to prepare a curriculum for ToT programme on BMCs which was held from 6-8 November 2019 in Chennai.

The writeshop was inaugurated by Dr V.B Mathur, Chairman, NBA. Mr J. Justin Mohan, IFS, Secretary, NBA welcome the participants, highlighted the importance of this writeshop aimed at preparing a comprehensive curriculum to support the trainers and training institutes to training members of BMCs across India. 20 experts from premier institutes in India that included agricultural universities, law college, representatives of the SBBs, technical officers from NBA, forest officers, administrators, traditional knowledge holders etc. were selected based on their domain knowledge to contribute to development of curriculum.

Dr. Geetha Nayak moderated the writeshop and guided the experts in the preparation of the curriculum through discussions following by writing sessions. The curriculum was designed on-premise was that a trainer who has to deliver training has to know more than she/he has to teach, must have a holistic understanding of the topics. Participants were also encouraged to provide case studies, pictures and relatable examples in addition to the written content. Dr Nayak also provided an overview of the 3-day programme and expected outcome from the writeshop.

On day 1 and 2, the participants were divided into three groups based on their interest and expertise, and were assigned a topic for discussion and writing. At the end of each day, groups presented their work to all participants to obtain feedback and inputs. Participants were encouraged to challenge each other’s ideas to enhance the peer-review process.

Day 3 mostly focused on discussion and final review of the content developed by the participants on day 1 and 3 and incorporating the inputs. In the concluding session, Dr V.B Mathur lauded the efforts of the ABS Partnership Project to bring together, experts in designing the curriculum and thanked all experts for their invaluable contribution.

Overview of curriculum is given below:

Held from 6^th - 8^th November 2019 in Chennai

Day 1: Concept of Biodiversity, ecosystem and its importance to human wellbeing

Threats to biodiversity and how to communicate the importance of biodiversity

Day 2: The Biodiversity Act – objectives, overview in a simple language

The Biodiversity Management Committee and its constitution.

Day 3: Functions of BMCs, documentation of PBRs

Key elements of access and benefit-sharing

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About the project

The ABS Partnership Project aims at strengthening the capacity of the National Biodiversity Authority, selected State Biodiversity Boards, Biodiversity Management Committees, as well as creating awareness amongst commercial users of biological resources and associated traditional knowledge for the effective implementation of ABS mechanisms under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 in keeping with India’s commitments under the Nagoya Protocol for ABS. Read more

For more information contact: biodiv.india@giz.de