The Andhra Pradesh State Biodiversity Board (APSBB) and the Chennai-based National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) are jointly organising a national workshop on ‘Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) in Marine Resources: Transferring Equity to Coastal Communities’ on April 29 in Vijayawada.
The workshop will operationalise a first-of-its-kind, area-wise Marine ABS framework under the Biological Diversity Act, 2023.
“The idea is to transition marine wealth management toward a Blue Economy model, where export profits from species like Yellowfin Tuna and Deep Sea Shrimp are channeled as direct financial dividends to over 3,000 coastal Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs),” Neelayapalem Vijay Kumar, Chairman, Andhra Pradesh Bio Diversity Board, has said.
“This will help local fishermen, as traditional custodians of the sea, legally benefit from the commercial utilisation of genetic assets,” he said.
The workshop will be attended by State and Central government officials involved in the policy formulation.
The State, which has the country’s second-longest coastline (974 km), currently accounts for about 35 per cent of the country’s marine exports.
Published on April 28, 2026