Wakeup call on biodiversity: Degradation poses ecological, economic risks

India's revised NBS-AP has done well to set 23 well-advised targets conforming to various global biodiversity-related conventions

The 16th Conference of Parties (COP-16) to the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held recently in Cali, Columbia, has proved a boon for India by spurring the government to revisit, and update, the country’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBS-AP). The earlier biodiversity management regime, drawn up initially in 1999 and amended in 2008 and 2014, had become outmoded, and needed a thorough revamp to serve the present-day needs. Its new version, presented at the COP-16, seeks to accommodate both national and global biodiversity protection agendas. Besides, it aims to address some key ecological issues and socio-economic challenges, such as the water crisis, food and livelihood security, human-wildlife interactions, pollution, and the growing menace of diseases and disasters.

 

India is one of the 17 recognised mega-diverse countries, which, together, account for 70 per cent of global biodiversity. Though it has only 2.4 per cent of the world’s land, it hosts around 8 per cent of the recorded global biological resources, comprising 45,500 species of plants, 91,000 species of animals, and countless other living organisms, many of which are yet to be documented or even discovered. Of the country’s overall bio-resources, 33 per cent plants, 55 per cent amphibians, 45.8 per cent reptiles, and 12.6 per cent mammals are endemic to India, being found nowhere else in the world. India also enjoys the distinction of having three of the world’s 37 sites designated “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems”. These are Kashmir, for saffron; Koraput, in Odisha, for traditional agriculture; and Kuttanad, in Kerala, for below-sea level farming.

 

Sadly, a sizable part of this valuable biodiversity is currently in jeopardy, with several organisms on the brink of extinction and needing urgent attention and support measures for survival. In fact, three of the country’s well-marked 34 biodiversity hotspots of global importance are among the areas which face severe existential threats. Little surprise, therefore, that the 2024 Global Nature Conservation Index, published last month, has placed India at a low 176th rung, among 180 nations. Only four countries—Kiribati, Turkey, Iraq, and Micronesia—are ranked below India. The Index report attributes India’s dismal positioning to habitat loss, pollution, and an unprecedentedly fast pace of decline in wildlife and plant population. Only 5-6 per cent of the country’s land is under strict protection. The legal regime governing biodiversity is also below par, the report points out.

 

The degradation of biodiversity has worrisome ecological, as also economic, implications. According to a World Bank report, the steady loss of India’s natural biological assets, and the consequential reduction in the natural ecosystem services, had caused an annual loss of at least 5.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the mid-2010s.

 

Unfortunately, agricultural biodiversity too is gravely endangered, at both global and national levels, notwithstanding the conscientious efforts to preserve vital genetic resources (germplasm) in specialised gene banks. India’s National Gene Bank, set up in New Delhi in 1996 under the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, and its 10 regional stations, has the capacity to preserve about a million germplasm in the form of seeds. Besides, the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), located in Patancheru, near Hyderabad, is also maintaining a large gene bank, having a substantial collection of germplasm of 11 crops collected from 144 countries. Yet, at field level, agri-biodiversity is diminishing at an alarming pace. Numerous nutritionally important crops, their landraces and evolved varieties have gone out of cultivation due to low economic returns or other reasons. On the other hand, the mono-cropping of high-yielding strains and hybrids of a few commercially lucrative crops has witnessed a perceptible surge. The contraction in the food basket can be a case in point. Out of about 7,000 plants that have historically been used in human diets the world over, only around 30 remain in regular cultivation. In fact, practically, only three grains – rice, wheat, and maize —now constitute the bulk of the human food. Even highly nutritious products, like millets, which constituted the staple diet of communities in several regions of the world till recently now require special drives to promote their production and consumption.

 

India’s revised NBS-AP has, therefore, done well to set 23 well-advised targets conforming to various global biodiversity-related conventions. These are aimed, basically, to achieve three objectives—mitigating threats to national biodiversity; meeting people’s needs through sustainable use and benefit-sharing of bio-resources; and ensuring ways and means of implementing biodiversity-safeguarding strategies. This plan also complies with the provisions of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted during the CBD’s COP-15 in 2022, which sought to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The NBS-AP envisages restoring at least 30 per cent of the degraded terrestrial, inland water, and marine (coastal) ecosystems to facilitate biodiversity resurgence. Though accomplishing these goals seems, prima facie, a tall order, it is vital to avert any further degeneration of the country’s precious biological wealth.

 

surinder.sud@gmail.com