Sustaining earth for the future

Sustaining earth for the future

Ecology and environment

Article:

• Kamal Bawa, President of ATREE, India, and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, expressed his views about environment protection in India.

Important Analysis:

• Need to protect the planet :
• The author empahsised that India is in need of a massive new efforts to monitor all life forms on planet, subject to increasing damage with unleashing of unprecedented economic and environmental forces.
• Biologists all over the world have been documenting the ongoing loss of life forms.
• Modern extinction rates are more than a thousand times greater than the rates of the geological past.
• In recent decades, populations of more than 40% of large mammals have declined and insect biomass has decreased by more than 75%.
• Natural habitats all over the world have shrunk. For these losses, our country ranks higher than most.
• Protecting life on earth:
• To protect life on earth, the famous American biologist E.O. Wilson has described an ambitious project he calls “Half-Earth”.
• He calls for formally protecting 50% of the earth’s land surface in order to conserve our rapidly disappearing natural heritage.
• Loopholes:
• Current efforts to map India’s biodiversity are largely restricted to forestlands, while plans for species monitoring are even more inadequate.
• In many of academic institutions, the ‘Life Sciences’ are still restricted largely to the study of cells and molecules.
• Steps to protect biodiversity and ecosystem:
• India’s forest policy calls for forests to cover almost a third of the country.
• Other natural systems such as grasslands and wetlands, the area to be protected could amount to almost 40%.
• Some areas could be fully protected while others might be managed by stakeholders for sustainable use and enrichment of biodiversity.
• Digital tools and artificial intelligence can be utilized to know vulnerability to changes in land use and climate.
• Institutions need to place far more emphasis on the scientific study of life at higher levels.
• Need a comprehensive inquiry into how society is shaping as well as responding to changes in biodiversity.
• Government and private philanthropy need to bring together multiple stakeholders to develop a programme to document map and monitor all life.
• Need to explore various dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem services and their critical link to future.
• Recent steps:
• The Department of Biotechnology and of Science and Technology has recently started programmes and initiatives in the broader areas of science and society.
• Several non-governments organizations have strong interdisciplinary programmes in environmental suitability.
• The India Biodiversity Portal has the ambitious goal of mapping India’s biodiversity.