The Habitats Trust has committed ₹3.3 crore to six conservation projects across India, underscoring a broader shift in environmental thinking: biodiversity is not merely a conservation concern, but a critical component of ecological resilience, livelihoods and long term economic security.
India’s biodiversity story is often told through its most recognisable symbols: tigers, elephants, forests and spectacular landscapes. Yet the country’s ecological wealth extends far beyond its iconic wildlife.
Much of the natural capital supporting India’s economy lies in ecosystems and species that rarely make headlines. Grasslands regulate water and soil systems. Mangroves provide coastal protection. Forests support livelihoods and climate resilience. Vultures contribute to ecological sanitation. Amphibians can serve as indicators of environmental health.
Their economic value may not always appear on a conventional balance sheet, but their disappearance can carry a very real cost.
That is the broader context in which The Habitats Trust has announced ₹3.3 crore in grants for six biodiversity conservation projects across India under the ninth edition of its grants programme.
The initiative is significant not simply because of the capital being deployed, but because of where that capital is going. The projects span mangroves, Himalayan oak forests, grasslands, threatened amphibians, vultures, hyenas, Indian wolves and coastal ecosystems, with an emphasis on scientific research, community participation and practical conservation.
For an organisation such as The Habitats Trust, the objective is to move conservation beyond isolated interventions and towards longer term, evidence based approaches capable of protecting both species and the ecosystems on which communities depend.
The Economics of an Invisible Asset
India accounts for roughly 7 to 8 percent of the world’s recorded species despite occupying only about 2.4 percent of global land area, according to the Government of India’s Principal Scientific Adviser. The country is also home to four of the world’s 34 recognised biodiversity hotspots. (Principal Scientific Adviser)
That concentration of biodiversity represents a form of natural capital.
The difficulty is that natural capital is often poorly represented in conventional economic decision making. A forest may not generate an obvious financial return in the way a factory does, yet it can provide water regulation, carbon storage, soil protection, pollination, flood mitigation and livelihood support.
The World Bank has previously estimated that environmental degradation in India carried economic costs equivalent to 5.7 percent of GDP annually, while ecosystem services were conservatively valued at between 3 and 5 percent of GDP. (World Bank)
The numbers make a larger point.
Nature is not external to the economy.
It is one of the systems on which the economy operates.
Putting Capital Behind Conservation
The Habitats Trust Grants programme is attempting to translate that understanding into on ground action.
This year’s six selected projects have been divided into three categories.
The Conservation Grant will support Arulagam’s work on critically endangered vultures and hyenas in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and a Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology project focused on threatened amphibians in human shaped landscapes across Western Ghats river catchments.
The Action Grant will support community led conservation of the Indian wolf in Bahraich’s human wolf conflict landscapes and grassland conservation and fodder security around two protected areas in Vidarbha.
The Research Grant will fund the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research’s assessment of remnant and restorable Himalayan oak ecosystems and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation’s coastal habitat monitoring programme.
The diversity of these projects is important.
There is no single biodiversity problem in India and therefore no single conservation solution.
Some ecosystems require restoration. Others need better monitoring. Some threatened species require direct intervention, while others depend on reducing conflict between people and wildlife. In many cases, conservation outcomes depend on whether local communities can participate in and benefit from the process.
From Conservation to Community Economics
This community dimension is particularly important.
Conservation has historically been vulnerable to being framed as a contest between economic development and environmental protection. Increasingly, that binary is proving inadequate.
Communities living alongside forests, grasslands, wetlands and coastal ecosystems often have the greatest practical knowledge of how these landscapes function. Their livelihoods may also be directly linked to the health of those ecosystems.
The projects supported by The Habitats Trust reflect this reality by incorporating community participation alongside scientific research.
That approach can make conservation more durable.
A project that produces a scientific report but fails to change behaviour or strengthen local stewardship may have limited long term impact. Conversely, community led conservation supported by rigorous ecological data can potentially create a stronger foundation for sustained protection.
The Habitats Trust describes its broader approach as one that goes beyond sustainability towards regenerative models, using ecological restoration, technology and species and habitat conservation to address complex environmental challenges.
A Grant Programme With a Larger Footprint
The scale of the programme has also expanded considerably since its launch.
The 2026 grants attracted 117 applications from across India. After a five stage evaluation process, 27 projects were shortlisted for field evaluation and 10 finalists presented their proposals to an expert jury.
The jury included Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson of HCL Group and Founder and Trustee of The Habitats Trust; wildlife expert Dr. M. K. Ranjitsinh; wildlife biologist and environmental journalist Bahar Dutt; and Brian Heath, Founder and CEO of Mara Conservancy in Kenya.
Projects were assessed on conservation relevance, scientific rigour, feasibility, stakeholder engagement, scalability and long term impact.
That selection framework is revealing.
It suggests that modern conservation funding is increasingly being evaluated through the same principles applied to serious development capital: evidence, execution capability, measurable outcomes, scalability and durability.
Since its inception in 2018, The Habitats Trust Grants programme has supported 38 conservation projects across 21 states and five Union Territories, distributing more than ₹16.2 crore.
The organisation itself says it now works across 32 states and Union Territories with more than 120 partners, covering more than six lakh hectares.
Why Biodiversity Belongs in the Business Conversation
For corporate India and financial markets, biodiversity is becoming increasingly difficult to treat as a peripheral ESG issue.
Companies depend on natural systems through their supply chains, access to water, agricultural inputs, raw materials, energy systems and physical infrastructure.
Nature loss can therefore translate into operational disruption, higher costs and greater risk.
Recent global analysis is reinforcing that connection. The World Bank has described biodiversity and ecosystem services as closely linked to economic development, while recent warnings from the United Nations have highlighted the growing financial and supply chain risks associated with nature loss. (World Bank)
For investors, the implication is significant.
Climate risk has already entered mainstream discussions around corporate disclosure, insurance, lending and portfolio construction. Biodiversity risk is following a more complicated path, but the underlying principle is similar.
What cannot be measured easily is often ignored.
What is ignored can eventually become expensive.
That is why the emergence of biodiversity finance, nature related risk assessment and natural capital accounting matters. Conservation is gradually moving from the margins of environmental policy towards the centre of discussions about resilience and economic security.
The Less Visible Species Matter Too
One of the most compelling aspects of The Habitats Trust’s programme is its focus on lesser known species.
The conservation economy often gravitates towards animals with high public visibility. Yet ecosystems do not function according to marketing logic.
Vultures, amphibians, wolves, hyenas and numerous less celebrated species perform ecological functions that can be disproportionately important to the health of their habitats.
Protecting them is therefore not simply about preserving individual species.
It is about maintaining the systems around them.
That is particularly evident in projects such as the Indian wolf initiative in Bahraich, where conservation must operate within landscapes characterised by intense human wildlife interaction. The challenge is not simply to protect an animal but to build a workable coexistence model involving communities, land use and ecological priorities.
Similarly, research into Himalayan oak forests has implications extending beyond the trees themselves. Forest ecosystems influence water availability, soil stability, biodiversity and the resilience of communities living within and around mountain landscapes.
The value of conservation consequently extends far beyond the grant amount.
Capital for Resilience
As explored across WEM India, the next phase of India’s growth will require more than capital investment in physical infrastructure. Economic resilience will increasingly depend on the health of the natural systems supporting that infrastructure and the communities that depend upon them.
This changes the way conservation funding should be viewed.
A ₹3.3 crore grant programme may appear modest against the scale of India’s economy. But the relevant question is not simply how much money is being spent.
It is what that money enables.
Research can improve policy. Monitoring can identify ecological deterioration earlier. Community participation can make interventions more durable. Restoration can strengthen ecosystem services. Better data can improve future allocation of capital.
In that sense, conservation grants can function as catalytic capital.
They fund the experimentation, evidence and local capacity required to build larger and more durable solutions.
The Business Case for Nature
India’s development challenge has never been simply about choosing between growth and conservation.
The more sophisticated challenge is to build a growth model in which natural capital is treated as an economic asset rather than an invisible subsidy.
The Habitats Trust is operating within that emerging paradigm.
Its latest grants support projects that combine science, community knowledge and practical action across some of India’s most vulnerable ecosystems. The immediate beneficiaries may be species and habitats, but the longer term beneficiary is a broader system of ecological and economic resilience.
