Livelihoods of the vast majority of the rural population in India are directly dependent on natural resources and elements of biodiversity in them. Ecological security is critical to the rural livelihoods because it provides for the survival of plants and animal species. The interdependence between livelihood and ecological security makes the rural population, primary stakeholders in biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) is hence a vital approach to enabling both conservation of biodiversity and supporting livelihoods. Therefore, there is a need for greater understanding of the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and on levels of sustainability of ecosystems and species. Integration of conservation and developmental activities addressing livelihood security of the communities will assume importance in this context. It is also important to recognize traditional and community knowledge and its continued use to ensure conservation and to secure biodiversity-based livelihoods. For this reason, it is also important to revitalize traditional institutions of decentralized decision-making to ensure sustainability in conservation and livelihood uses.
                  In this context United Nations Development programme and Ministry of Environment and Forests sponsored a project entitled "Biodiversity Conservation through community based natural resource management" implementing in four states (Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa) are primarily tribal dominated and therefore forest dependent livelihoods will be largely benefited form interventions that are proposed in this project. In the state development of alternative sources of income assumes importance as the communities depends mainly on the natural resources for their livelihoods. Biodiversity is facing serious threats from different human activities. Some of the major threats including: mining in biodiversity rich areas; large development projects; poaching; human-wildlife conflicts; habitat loss and habitat fragmentation due to a variety of human activities; diversion of grazing lands and other common pool resources to other uses; growing demand for fuel and fodder resources; and loss of crop and livestock diversity with the promotion of commercial agriculture and animal husbandry, and intensive use of inorganic pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. Despite the multiple schemes for improving the livelihood of the vulnerable sections of the population, efforts to address linkages between communities and local biodiversity resources are limited.