chennai now law students can choose to specialize in a newly emerging field biodiversity law to promote awareness and improve vigilance against violation the chennaibased centre for biodiversity policy and law will begin training law students across the country in this branchthe centre launched on tuesday is the result of collaboration between the indian and norwegian governments and has received about 37 million it will come under the national biodiversity authority nba an autonomous body set up to oversee implementation of the biological diversity actwe have already written to a few law universities and discussed a training programme for their students said t chatterjee secretary to the union ministry of environment and forests we also plan to write to judicial academies and invite senior lawyers especially those specializing in company law according to nba chairman dr balakrishna pisupathi there is currently little or no knowledge of laws in this area there are no law schools that have looked at biodiversity policy and law he said training lawyers in this area will ensure more cases and judiciary appeals against violationschatterjee said they would begin gathering case studies on biodiversity piracy that had happened so far this he said would serve as reference material and precedence for further regulations in the fieldbiodiversity piracy means acquiring resources specific to india and exporting them for commercial development without permission from the authorities or paying royalties to the local community concerned for example said chatterjee in a village in mahbubnagar district of andhra pradesh a japanese company recently procured barks from a local variety of tree for export but hadnt got permission from the nba based on a complaint we came down upon them and they now pay royalties to the village panchayatthe most famous example of such piracy is the case against monsanto for using local varieties of brinjal to develop bt brinjal without approval the nba also discovered illegal export of embryos of gir breed of cattle from gujarat