Abstract:

India's transition from a commodity-centric maritime extraction model to a rights-based Sovereign Equity framework, formalized through the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Act, 2023, and the Revised Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Regulations, 2025, represents a pivotal institutional transformation with profound economic implications for coastal communities. This study develops a quantitative framework to estimate ABS revenue potential from marine capture fisheries in Andhra Pradesh (AP), the state accounting for approximately 35% of India's marine export value, and applies statistical and machine learning techniques to project revenue trajectories, identify key predictive variables, and model the socioeconomic dividend for over 3,000 coastal Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs). Using secondary export data from the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), fish landing records from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) for FY 2021-22 through FY 2024-25, and international trade statistics indexed to the Harmonized System (HS) codes, this study estimates a baseline annual ABS accrual of INR 30.60 crore for AP's wild-catch marine sector across a taxable export base of INR 7,500 crore. Five machine learning models, including Random Forest Regression, XGBoost Gradient Boosting, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks, Elastic Net Regression, and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) baseline regression, are evaluated for ABS revenue forecasting. The XGBoost model demonstrated the strongest predictive performance (R² = 0.931, RMSE = 1.23), with export price volatility, landing volume, and species rarity index emerging as the three most influential predictors. Furthermore, the study extends the ABS analysis to the broader Eastern Corridor comprising AP, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, and West Bengal, projecting a combined corridor ABS potential exceeding INR 148 crore per annum under a uniform 0.4% levy. The findings validate ABS not as a tax on fishers, but as a compliance-driven wealth transfer mechanism that aligns India's domestic biodiversity governance with the Nagoya Protocol, the BBNJ Treaty (in force since January 2026), and the Cali Fund DSI mechanism established at COP16.

Description:

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