The Lift Line
A tiger reserve with a highway on either side is not a reserve; it is a very well-managed island. The conservation question of this decade is what happens in the space between the islands, and almost none of that space is inside a fence.
Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam
OECMs sit at the intersection of the Kunming-Montreal framework, India’s protected-area architecture and community forest rights, which makes them unusually productive for GS3. They are also newly prominent enough that most candidates will not have the vocabulary, so getting the definition precisely right is a genuine differentiator.
GS Paper 3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation; biodiversity; environmental impact assessment.
For Prelims, the OECM definition, the 30x30 target and India’s protected-area categories are all directly testable.
| Concept | Meaning | Why UPSC tests it |
|---|---|---|
| OECM | A geographically defined area outside a protected area, governed and managed in ways achieving sustained, effective in-situ biodiversity conservation, whether or not conservation is the primary management objective. The outcome must be actual and sustained, not merely incidental | The newly central category; the “not a protected area but achieving conservation” definition is the testable part, and the “outcome must be real” qualifier is where most candidates get it wrong |
| Kunming-Montreal GBF Target 3 (30x30) | Conserve at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030 | The numerical commitment that makes OECMs necessary |
| India’s PA categories | National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Conservation Reserves, Community Reserves, under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 | Conservation and Community Reserves were added by the 2002 amendment, and are the categories closest to OECMs |
| Ecological corridor | A habitat linkage permitting movement of species between larger habitat patches | The connectivity concept underlying the landscape-scale argument |
Background and Context
India’s protected area network comprises 1,014 protected areas, made up of 106 National Parks, 573 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 115 Conservation Reserves and 220 Community Reserves under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, together covering 1,75,169 sq km, or 5.32 per cent of the country’s geographical area. Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves, introduced by the 2002 amendment to the Act, which inserted Chapter IV-A, were themselves an early acknowledgement that conservation outside strictly protected land needed a legal category.
India’s OECM identification work has proceeded through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change alongside the National Biodiversity Authority, with UNDP support, producing A Compendium of OECMs in India and Criteria and Guidelines for Identifying OECMs in India, both 2022, which set out a fourteen-category classification clustered under terrestrial, waterbodies and marine.
Globally, roughly 7,500 sites covering about 1.3 per cent of the Earth’s surface have been reported to the World Database on OECMs since reporting began in 2019, with Canada accounting for a large share. But they come from only 17 of 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and India is not among them. The framework exists; the accounting has barely begun.
| Candidate OECM category in India | Illustration |
|---|---|
| Sacred groves | Community-protected forest patches conserved under religious sanction; roughly 14,000 are documented, though expert estimates of the true number run to 100,000 to 150,000 |
| Van panchayat forests | 11,217 forest panchayats in Uttarakhand managing 4.52 lakh hectares under village-level institutions |
| Elephant corridors | 150 corridors across 15 states (Elephant Corridors of India 2023), a 40 per cent rise since 2010, of which 126 lie within a single state; identified and mapped but largely lacking legal protection |
| Coastal and wetland commons | Community-managed fisheries and wetlands delivering biodiversity outcomes alongside livelihood use |
| Institutional lands | Defence establishments, industrial estates and campuses whose access restrictions incidentally conserve habitat |
The Core Argument / Issue
The arithmetic that forces the question
Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits parties to conserving 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of coastal and marine areas, by 2030. India is at 5.32 per cent in formal protected areas. There is no realistic pathway from 5 to 30 through protected-area expansion alone, because each new protected area in India carries costs that are political and human rather than merely financial: displacement, restriction of forest-dependent livelihoods, and conflict with rights recognised under the Forest Rights Act, 2006. OECMs offer area that is already delivering conservation without requiring any of that.
The ecology that makes it more than accounting
Even if the 30 per cent figure did not exist, the case would hold. Conservation biology is unambiguous that in a fragmenting landscape, connectivity between habitat patches determines population viability more than the quality of management within any single patch. Isolated populations lose genetic diversity, cannot recolonise after local extinction, and cannot shift range as climate alters habitat suitability. India’s expanding highway and railway networks cut precisely across this connective geography. A conservation strategy confined to reserves is therefore not merely insufficient in area; it is addressing the wrong variable.
Why OECMs are politically feasible where protected areas are not
The decisive feature of an OECM designation is what it does not do: it does not change ownership, it does not displace, and it does not require the primary land use to become conservation. A sacred grove remains a sacred grove; a van panchayat forest remains under its panchayat. Recognition documents an existing conservation outcome rather than imposing a new restriction. That is why this is achievable at scale in a country where creating a new national park is a multi-year contest.
The risk that has to be designed against
There is a real danger, and a good answer should state it plainly. Many candidate OECMs have been conserved for generations precisely because they lay outside state administration, governed by community norms and religious sanction. Formal recognition brings them into a national accounting framework and, potentially, into the regulatory attention that accompanies it. If designation eventually brings conditionality, permissions or restrictions, it may weaken the community authority that produced the conservation in the first place, and the recognition will have destroyed what it recorded.
The second risk is accounting rather than ecological: a country under pressure to report 30 per cent has an obvious incentive to designate generously and monitor loosely. Area reported without outcome monitoring is a number, not a conservation gain.
How to Think About This (Analytical Frame)
When a target is expressed in area and the mechanism is expressed in outcomes, watch for the substitution of the former for the latter. Percentage-of-territory targets are politically legible and easy to report, which is why they are adopted; but the thing that matters ecologically is whether biodiversity is actually being conserved on that territory, which is harder to measure and easier to leave unmeasured. Whenever policy sets a quantitative coverage target, ask what outcome the coverage is a proxy for, and whether that outcome is being measured independently. The same logic applies to forest-cover targets, renewable-capacity targets and financial-inclusion account numbers.
The Diagram in Words
Picture India’s conservation map as a scattering of dark, well-defended islands, the protected areas, covering about a twentieth of the surface. Between them runs a vast intermediate terrain, mostly shaded rather than dark: farmland with tree cover, sacred groves, community forests, canal banks, defence land, temple tanks, and corridors along which elephants still move. Conventional policy sees only the islands and asks how to make them bigger. The OECM argument is that the shading between them already carries much of the biodiversity load, invisibly and unrecorded, and that the first task is not to create more dark islands but to stop the shaded terrain from being cut through, and to give it a name in the national accounts.
Way Forward
- Build OECM recognition on free, prior and informed consent, with the governing community retaining decision-making authority rather than transferring it to a forest department.
- Ensure recognition confers support, not restriction, through funding, technical assistance and secure tenure, so that designation is something communities seek rather than resist.
- Pair every reported OECM with outcome monitoring, so that the national conservation estate measures biodiversity actually conserved rather than territory counted toward a target.
- Give legal protection to identified ecological corridors, since connectivity is the specific function that protected areas cannot perform and infrastructure most directly threatens.
- Integrate OECM mapping with infrastructure planning, so that highway and railway alignment decisions carry the conservation estate as a constraint rather than discovering it afterwards.
PYQ Linkage and Practice
UPSC has repeatedly tested protected-area categories, the Wildlife Protection Act, community conservation and India’s international biodiversity commitments; OECMs connect all four and supply current vocabulary for what would otherwise be a familiar answer.
Practice question: “A conservation strategy confined to protected areas addresses the wrong variable in a fragmenting landscape.” Examine this claim with reference to Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures and India’s 30x30 commitment. (250 words, 15 marks)
Interview angle: Recognising a sacred grove or a van panchayat forest as an OECM brings it into a national conservation accounting system. What is the risk that formal recognition changes the community’s relationship with the land it has conserved informally for generations, and how would you guard against it?
Sources: The Hindu, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Convention on Biological Diversity
Source: Beyond the Fence: OECMs and the Case for a National Conservation Estate — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis
