1. 190 Plants removed from the purview of
the Biological Diversity Act 2002 as
Normally Traded commodities
Environment Support
Group
1572, Sapthagiri, 100 feet
Ring Road,
Banashankari 2nd Stage,
Bangalore-70
Tel:91-80-26713559/60
www.esgindia.org

2. 190 plants declared Normally
Traded Commodities
• In 2010, MoEF and NBA notified 190
plants as Normally Traded Commodities
per Sec 40 of BD Act, without any
compliance with the Principle of Prior and
Informed Consent
• On review, we discovered at least 15
plants were critically endangered, or
threatened, a fact confirmed by IUCN.
• Trade is a major cause for extinction of
species.
• The NTC list is thus comprehensively
violative of various national and
international regulations.

4. More species on IUCN Red List
• The case of a fish Puntius
denisonii, also known as Miss
Kerala, is indicative of the threat
that exists to species from trade.
• Miss Kerala, discovered as a
collector’s item in the 1996 Rome
Aquarium Congress, has by 2010
come close to extinction due to
commercial trade.
• IUCN has now placed it on the Red
List - nearing extinction.
• Similarly, unfettered trade in
endangered plants could drive
them into extinction.

5. Is NTC clause a gateway to species
extinction?
• "India Losing Rare Medicinal Plants",
published on the front page of The Asian
Age, 14th February, 2010, in which Jairam
Ramesh is quoted to have said that "a
five-year moratorium should be placed
on the export of all raw materials in
order to save these plants from
extinction” while admitting “annually, Rs.
800 crores worth of rare medicinal plants
are being exported in raw form. These
plants then get re-imported back into the
country as medicines which are sold at
much higher prices.“
• Yet no action has been taken to review
listing 190 plants as Normally Traded
Commodities – over two years since we
filed the complaint against the decision

6. Loss of species
• Twenty-one percent of all "If the world made equivalent losses in
known mammals, 30 share prices there would be a rapid
percent of all known response and widespread panic, as we
amphibians,12 percent of saw during the recent economic crisis.
all known birds, 35 The loss of biodiversity, crucial to life on
percent of conifers and earth, has, in comparison, produced
cycads, 17 percent of little response," said Jackson. "By
sharks and 27 percent of ignoring the urgent need for action we
reef-building corals stand to pay a much higher price in the
assessed for the IUCN long term than the world can afford." -
Red List of Threatened IUCN
Species™ are threatened
with extinction.
http://www.iucnredlist.org

7. Plant species that have been listed in the Normally
Traded commodities also listed on other lists of
Threatened and endangered species
• BSI Negative Plant List- 2
• ENVIS Negative list-1
• Karnataka Medicinal Plants Authority-4
• National Medicinal Plants Board-6
• ENVIS List of threatened Plants-1
• Ministry of commerce notification- 6