CHENNAI: With rainforests being destroyed for the expansion
of fast food outlets and India’s vast cultural biodiversity being run over by
urbanisation, the Indian Biodiversity Congress (IBC) 2014 saw scientists,
academicians and activists from all over India coming together to discuss
various themes.
Over 750 delegates presented papers on climate change, food
security, taxonomy and cultural and linguistic linkages of biodiversity. The
focus of the conference this year was biodiversity for poverty alleviation.
The three-day conference, which started on December 18, was
organised by the Centre for Innovation in Science and Social Actions,
Thiruvananthapuram and CPR Environmental Education Centre, Chennai, along with
School of Public Health, SRM University, Chennai and Navdanya, New Delhi.
Biodiversity as the need of the hour is recognised by all,
and as chief project director of Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Conservation and
Greening Project R K Ojha put it: it is
no longer for compulsion but is now a compulsion. “With India harbouring nearly
seven per cent of the recorded species of the world, representing four of the
34 globally identified biodiversity hotspots, it is a vast repository of
traditional biological knowledge resource,” said K Rosaiah, Governor of Tamil
Nadu, who inaugurated the conference. “Nearly 200 million people are dependent
on forests for their livelihood, and the joint forest management should aim at
regenerating forests through involvement of local communities.”
“We are dredging the top soil and it takes 500 years to
create one inch of new top soil,” said Nandita Krishna, director of CPR
Environmental Education Centre, lamenting on how acres of land are being used
for cattle to be raised for slaughter. “Animal farming should instead be used
to alleviate hunger,” she said. The objective of IBC is to formulate a vision
and alternate strategic plan for the conservation of biodiversity in the
context of the prevailing concept of ‘development at any cost’.
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