Biodiversity gets PM push with Rs 250cr pledge

To push the developed world into putting more funds for biodiversity conservation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday committed $50 million (Rs 250 crore) to strengthen institutional mechanism for biodiversity in India and other developing nations.

Updated on: Oct 17, 2012, 01:08:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Hyderabad

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To push the developed world into putting more funds for biodiversity conservation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday committed $50 million (Rs 250 crore) to strengthen institutional mechanism for biodiversity in India and other developing nations.

"I am pleased to launch the Hyderabad Pledge and announce that our government has decided to earmark a sum of $50 million during India's presidency of the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity…," he said, while inaugurating the high-level segment at a United Nations conference on Biodiversity.

Asking the global community to work together to prevent ecological " catastrophe", he said, India was willing to join hands with all countries to reach a "happy compromise" that will secure a future which provides ecological and economic space for sustainable growth.

On the domestic front, the PM promised more inclusive conservation and protection of livelihoods of fisherfolk on the lines of Forest Rights Act, which aims to protect the rights of tribal communities and other forest dwellers. He also pointed out how having a digital database of the traditional knowledge has helped in checking bio-piracy and how India was sharing the benefits with locals under the National Biodiversity Act.

Though they welcomed the Hyderabad pledge, activists termed Singh's speech as being far from the truth. "Listening to his assertions regarding India's commitment to conservation and livelihoods, one would think the country is in the right hands. Nothing can be farther from the truth," said Ashish Kothari, founder of NGO Kalpvariksh, accusing the government of displacing people for economic development and failing to implement the Forest Rights Act.

He urged countries to make concerted effort to save biodiversity as India had done by ratifying the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing and pointed out that the 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets under the convention were not fully met.

"This situation needs to change," he said, adding that the critical issue really was to mobilise the resources.

But, the talks on resource mobilisation are stuck because countries such as Canada and Mexico refuse to budge from their positions. Canada does not want to commit any money till a "realistic" assessment of biodiversity loss is done, while Mexico wants some commitment before any assessment study is done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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