Protecting India’s Natural Laboratories

Context: Preserving geological heritage is as important as preserving biodiversity and cultural heritage.

Importance of preserving geo-heritage sites

• India is world’s ‘natural laboratory’ for geo-scientific learning: Geological features and landscapes that evolved over billions of years through numerous cycles of tectonic and climate upheavals are recorded in India’s rock formations and terrains.
  • Eg: Kutch region in Gujarat has dinosaur fossils, Tiruchirappalli region of Tamil Nadu, (Mesozoic Ocean) is a storehouse of Cretaceous (60 million years ago) marine fossils.
• Learning from geological past essential in tackling climate change: Learning from the geological past, like the warmer intervals during the Miocene Epoch (23 to 5 million years ago), whose climate can be reconstructed using proxies and simulations, may serve as an analogue for future climate.
• Expanding educational spaces: Study of environmental history is essential to know how physical geography gets transformed into a cultural entity.
  • Studying these sites, one get to know physical geography, environmental history and cultural legacy.
• Promotes geo-tourism that generates revenue and employment.

 Conservation efforts for preserving geo-heritage sites

• UNESCO led efforts:
  • ‘First International Symposium on the Conservation of our Geological Heritage’, 1991: This declaration foresaw the establishment of geo-parks as sites
  • In late 1990s, as a continuation, UNESCO facilitated efforts to create a formal programme promoting a global network of geo-heritage sites.
  • UNESCO provided guidelines for developing national geo-parks so that they become part of the Global Geoparks Network. Today, there are 169 Global Geoparks across 44 countries.
• National laws to conserve geological and natural heritage: Vietnam and Thailand passed such laws.
• India ‘s Approach: Geological Survey of India (GSI) has identified 32 sites as National Geological Monuments.
  • India is a signatory to the establishment of UNESCO Global Geoparks.

 Issues in geo-heritage conservation

• Lack of interest in geological literacy: Neglect of disciplines like environmental science and geology by academicians & policymakers.
• Apathetic Attitude of Government: India does not have any legislation or policy for the geo-heritage conservation.
• Destruction of geo-heritage sites in the name of development: Disappearance of geological heritage sites due to unplanned and booming real estate business & unregulated stone mining activities.
  • Anjar (Kutch district) provides evidence for a massive meteoritic impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago destroyed due to the laying of a new rail track.
  • Nepheline Syenite site in Ajmer district of Rajasthan was destroyed in a road-widening project.
  • High Court intervened to prevent the destruction of the Lonar impact crater in Maharashtra.

Way Forward: Immediate implementation of sustainable conservation measures such as

• Geo-conservation legislation that guides land-use planning.
• Constitution of National Commission for Heritage Sites.
• New national conservation policy under the direct supervision of a national body committed to the protection of geo-heritage sites.