India can become a biodiversity champion
Context
Currently, India hosts 17% of the planet’s human population and 17% of the global area in biodiversity hotspots, placing it at the helm to guide the planet in becoming biodiversity champions.
Initiatives taken by India towards biodiversity conservation
- Union Budget 2023: Union Budget 2023 mentioned “Green Growth” as one of the seven priorities or Saptarishis.
- National Mission for a green India: National Mission for a Green India seeks to expand forest cover on degraded territories while also protecting current forested areas.
- Green Credit Programme: The Green Credit Programme encourages ecologically viable and responsive actions by businesses, individual, and local bodies.
- The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes (MISHTI): It is notable because mangroves and coastal ecosystems are important in reducing climate change.
- The PM Programme for Restoration, Awareness, Nourishment, and Amelioration of Mother Earth (PM-PRANAM): It seeks to decrease synthetic fertiliser and pesticide inputs, which are essential for agricultural sustainability.
- Amrit Dharohar scheme: It is anticipated to improve biodiversity, carbon stock, eco-tourism opportunities, and revenue generation for local people by encouraging optimum use of wetlands.
- The recent intervention of the Union Ministry of Environment to prevent the draining of Haiderpur, a Ramsar wetland in Uttar Pradesh, to protect migrating waterfowl is promising.
- All of the above efforts are essential because the nation is losing natural assets such as soils, land, water, and biodiversity.
International initiatives
- At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (2022) in Montréal, Canada, 188 nation delegates signed the 30*30 pledge.
- It seeks to “halt and reverse” biodiversity decline by 2030 by preserving 30% of the world’s territory and 30% of the world’s oceans.
Challenges faced by India: Climate change → Global warming → Increases pest attack and diseases in crops/higher demands for water → reducing farm yields.
Way forward
- Understand the importance of empirical studies: Evidence-based application is important not only for the success of these initiatives, but also for documenting lessons learned for future replication.
- Take into account ecological-cultural-sociological elements: New programmes should use contemporary ideas of sustainability and ecosystem value that take into account ecological-cultural-sociological elements of our biological wealth.
- Reduction of water use in important areas, such as agriculture, by promoting:
- Changes to products that require less water, such as millet
- Water recycling investments in metropolitan regions using a mix of grey and blue-green infrastructure.
- Give priority to ecological restoration: The Green India Mission prioritizes ecological restoration over tree planting, selecting sites to ensure ecological connectivity in areas fragmented by linear infrastructure.
- Incorporate local communities: Traditional knowledge and practices of these communities (local and nomadic) should be incorporated into implementation plans.
- Raise awareness about biological wealth: Each initiative should include substantial educational and research funding to evaluate and bring awareness about India’s biological wealth.
Conclusion
The sum and variation of our biological wealth known as biodiversity is critical to the future of the planet. Keeping this in mind, the Indian government intends to start the National Mission on Biodiversity and Human Wellbeing in the near future, leveraging the power of multidisciplinary knowledge for greening India and its economy.