Saving Biodiversity, Securing Earth’s Future

Context: The National Biodiversity Mission can help mend the dysfunctional relationship between humanity and nature.

Acknowledging the value of biodiversity

• India’s vast and rich biodiversity gives the nation a unique identity and varied ecosystems.
• India home to nearly 8% of global biodiversity on just 2.3% of global land area and containing sections of four of the 36 global biodiversity hotspots.
• Our biodiversity serves as a perpetual source of spiritual enrichment, intimately linked to our physical and mental well-being.
• Staggering value of forests: Forests alone may yield services worth more than a trillion rupees per year.

Dysfunctional relationship between humanity and nature

• Globally, we have lost 7% intact forests since 2000, and recent assessments indicate that over a million species might be lost forever during the next several decades.
• Stresses on nature, rural landscapes, and public health: Emergence of infectious diseases, lack of food and nutritional security, rural unemployment and climate change.

India’s policy response: National Mission on Biodiversity and Human Well-Being (NMBHWB)

• Mission offers a holistic framework, integrated approach and widespread societal participation:
  • Public engagement, whether it is in the policymaking arena or in exploration, restoration and conservation of biodiversity, remains a critical component of the planned Mission.
• Strengthening the science of restoring, conserving, and sustainably utilising India’s natural heritage. Restoring, and even increasing, our natural assets by millions of crores of rupees.
• Embedding biodiversity in all developmental programmes: Particularly in agriculture, ecosystem services, health, bio-economy, and climate change mitigation. These include -
  • Mitigation programmes that will lessen the impacts of climate change and other natural disasters, such as pandemics and floods.
  • Rejuvenation of agricultural production systems and increasing rural incomes from biodiversity-based agriculture while also creating millions of green jobs in restoration and nature tourism.
  • Establishing a citizen and policy-oriented biodiversity information system.
• Enhancing capacity across all sectors: For the realisation of India’s national biodiversity targets and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
• Allows India to emerge as a leader: In demonstrating the linkage between conservation of natural assets and societal well-being.
• Stressing on nature-based solutions: “One Health” programme, integrating human health with animal, plant, soil and environmental health, has both the preventive potential to curtail future pandemics along with interventional capability for unexpected public health challenges.

Way forward: Need for a dedicated cadre -

• Invest in a strong and extensive cadre of human resources required to meet the enormous and complex environmental challenges of the 21st century.
• Require training professionals of the highest calibre in sustainability and biodiversity science, along with an investment in civil society outreach.