India can become a Biodiversity Champion

Context: 

In response to the call of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, the Union Budget 2023 mentioned “Green Growth” as one of the seven priorities or Saptarishis. The article analyses different initiatives mentioned in the Budget.

Various Initiatives to Promote ‘Green Growth’:

• The National Mission for a Green India aims to increase forest cover on degraded lands and protect existing forested lands.
• The Green Credit Programme has the objective to “incentivize environmentally sustainable and responsive actions by companies, individuals and local bodies”.
• The Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes (MISHTI) is particularly significant because of the extraordinary importance of mangroves and coastal ecosystems in mitigating climate change.
• The Prime Minister Programme for Restoration, Awareness, Nourishment, and Amelioration of Mother Earth (PM-PRANAM) aims to reduce inputs of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides for sustaining agriculture.
• The Amrit Dharohar scheme is expected to “encourage optimal use of wetlands, and enhance biodiversity, carbon stock, eco-tourism opportunities and income generation for local communities”.

International Initiative for Biodiversity Conservation:

• The importance of our planet’s biodiversity was strongly articulated at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada. 
• In December 2022, 188 country representatives adopted an agreement to “halt and reverse” biodiversity loss by conserving 30% of the world’s land and 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, known as the 30×30 pledge. 

Basing the programmes on science: 

• These programmes should respond to the current state of the country’s biodiversity with evidence based implementation. 
• A science based and inclusive monitoring programme is critical not only for the success of these efforts but also for documentation and distillation of lessons learnt for replication, nationally as well as globally.
• New missions and programmes should effectively use modern concepts of sustainability and valuation of ecosystems that consider ecological, cultural, and sociological aspects of our biological wealth. 
• With clear system boundaries, prioritisation of the benefits to ‘resource people’, and fund services (rather than stock­ flows) as the economic foundation for generating value has enormous potential for multiple sustainable bio­economies.
• Ecological flows can be sustained through:

• • reduction in water use in key sectors such as agriculture by encouraging changes to less water intensive crops such as millets 
  • investments in water recycling in urban areas using a combination of grey and blue green infrastructure.

• Implementation of Green India Mission should focus on: 
  • ecological restoration rather than tree plantation
  • choosing sites where it can contribute to ecological connectivity in landscapes fragmented by linear infrastructure
  • The choice of species and density should be informed by available knowledge and evidence on resilience under emerging climate change and synergies and tradeoffs with respect to hydrologic services. 
  • Site selection should also be carefully considered for the mangrove initiative with a greater emphasis on diversity of mangrove species with retention of the integrity of coastal mudflats and salt pans themselves.

Local community involvement:

• Each of these efforts must be inclusive of local and nomadic communities where these initiatives will be implemented. 
• Traditional knowledge and practices of these communities should be integrated into the implementation plans. 

Conclusion 

• Each programme should include significant educational and research funding to critically appraise and bring awareness to India’s biological wealth. 
• For this, the National Mission on Biodiversity and Human Wellbeing, already approved by the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM­STIAC), has to be immediately launched by the government. 

News Source: The Hindu