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Union minister for environment, forest and climate change, Prakash Javadekar, on Friday emphasised the need to conserve biodiversity for the well being of present and coming generations. “We have borrowed this earth from our children, and not inherited it from our ancestors,” Javadekar said in his message, on the occasion of World Biodiversity Day.
The minister also said the imperative challenge before India was to imbibe and translate the theme of biodiversity for sustainable development, due to its privileged status as a mega biodiverse country. India’s past and projected demographic transitions and its commitment to democratic principles make it responsible towards conserving biodiversity.
World Biodiversity Day
This day is celebrated every year to recognise the pivotal role of biodiversity to the life on earth and well-being of humans, as well as to increase awareness of its importance and the threats it faces. The Convention of Biodiversity was adopted on this day in the year 1992. This year’s theme is ‘biodiversity for sustainable development’. Some other themes in preceding years were ‘biodiversity and poverty alleviation’ in 2003, ‘biodiversity: life insurance for our changing world’ in 2005, and ‘biodiversity and agriculture’ in 2008.
Javadekar said the theme this year was very topical, as the international community accelerated its efforts to define the post-2015 agenda, including adopting a set of goals for sustainable development. It reflects the bigger and very crucial paradigm shift that the world had undergone from seeing ‘development’ and ‘environment’ as two ends of a spectrum, where one must be compromised in order to enhance the other, to having development while protecting environment.
Saying the ecosystem diversity was unparalleled in the country, he stressed that India had seven-eight per cent of the recorded species of the world — 46,000 species of plants and 91,000 species of animals. He also said key aspects of the way ahead was through promotion of multiple varieties of staple foodgrain, switching to cropping patterns, wider seed and plant variety choices, water conservation, farming practices that combined the best of traditional wisdom and science with a whole-system perspective and valuing the therapeutic properties and medicinal uses of various plants and animals.
