ADB warns India: Without urgent climate-biodiversity law, 2030 targets will slip away

By Rajiv Shah  

The Asian Development Bank has released a major policy report, 'Bridging Climate and Biodiversity Law: Coherent, Rights-Based Governance in Asia and the Pacific', warning that Asia and the Pacific, including India, face deepening climate and biodiversity crises unless countries urgently integrate their legal frameworks to deliver on both the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. 

Published this month, the document highlights that the region is warming faster than the global average, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise without peaking, and extinction rates are accelerating, while fossil fuel subsidies reached a staggering 1.3 trillion dollars in 2022 alone.

For India, the report carries particular weight. It notes that India’s current nationally determined contribution pledges a 45 percent reduction in emissions intensity by 2030 from 2005 levels and aims for net-zero by 2070, yet these commitments remain largely non-binding under domestic law. 

While India has updated its National Biodiversity Action Plan to align with the post-2022 global framework and has strengthened forest rights legislation, the country still lacks a comprehensive, enforceable climate law that links mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity protection in a coherent manner. The report points out that policy silos between environment, energy, and finance ministries, combined with continued coal dependence, are undermining progress.

The analysis underscores that India, as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations and home to critical biodiversity hotspots from the Western Ghats to the Eastern Himalayas, risks missing both its 2030 targets and the broader 1.5-degree pathway unless it moves quickly to enact an overarching framework law that incorporates rights-based approaches, ensures just transition for coal-dependent communities, and mandates coordination across sectors. 

It praises India’s community forest management models as global best practice but stresses the need for stronger legal recognition of Indigenous and local communities’ rights, expanded payment-for-ecosystem-services mechanisms, and removal of perverse subsidies that still favor fossil fuels. As the ADB report states, "India's NDC Progress: Surpassed 2025 emissions intensity target (33-36% reduction by 2020); aims 45% by 2030 via PAT scheme, Carbon Market, afforestation," yet it warns of persistent gaps, noting that "Gaps: Limited capacity, poor coordination, unaligned budgets, no vulnerability assessments." On biodiversity, the document highlights India's 2023 Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, which "affirms benefit-sharing but lacks explicit FPIC; recognizes Indigenous knowledge," while critiquing ongoing "evictions: Adivasi from parks/reserves; contrary to CBD."

With the next round of nationally determined contributions due soon, and increasing international pressure through mechanisms such as the European Union’s deforestation regulation, the ADB report effectively serves as a roadmap and a warning: without rapid legal and institutional reform that bridges climate and biodiversity governance, India’s development gains, food security, and the livelihoods of millions could be jeopardized in the coming decade.