The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) to create awareness about the crucial importance of biodiversity to society, to communicate the human costs of biodiversity loss, and to enthuse people, particularly youth, throughout the world in the fight to protect all life on Earth.
The pressures leading to biodiversity loss, particularly those resulting from adopting unsustainable developmental paradigms, are, in many cases, intensifying, despite several national and international initiatives. This is a challenge not only for the conservation of biodiversity but also for preventing biodiversity loss as envisaged in “Biodiversity Target” 2010. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the key for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and for the fair and equitable sharing of benefits. India is about to hold the eleventh Conference of Parties (COP) to the CBD in October 2012 in New Delhi. The hosting of this COP shows not only India’s role as a major mega-diverse country, but also its commitment to playing a global leadership role in biodiversity conservation.
We need a new vision on biological diversity for a healthy planet and a sustainable future for humankind. Biodiversity and ecosystem changes could be prevented or significantly reduced or even reversed if strong action is initiated urgently, comprehensively and appropriately, at international, national and local levels. As a partner organization of CBD in India for IYB, Centre for Innovation in Science and Social Action (CISSA) has taken initiative to hold the first Indian Biodiversity Congress (IBC)– a get together of biodiversity experts, professionals, amateurs, NGOs and community members– for discussing the current status of biodiversity in India, scope for using the greater biodiversity of the country for alleviating poverty, to fight globalisation, and to formulate developmental paradigms and policies for conservation and sustainable utilisation of biodiversity besides sharing of benefits as envisaged in CBD.
In this context, the Focal Theme of IBC 2010 is selected as “Biodiversity and Development: Mainstreaming Biodiversity into Policy-Making”, with the primary aim of discussing strategies and action plans for integrating biodiversity into policy making, and to ensure the involvement of local communities for biodiversity conservation at the grass roots. The developmental activities have its serious repercussions in the Western Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot. Therefore, a special session on (“Biodiversity Conservation in Western Ghats-Status, Challenges and Opportunities”) is also planned along with the Congress.
The IBC 2010 will formulate a vision and alternate strategic plan for the conservation of biodiversity in the context of prevailing concept of “development at ANY cost”, which, we hope will define a vision and set time-bound targets to stimulate the action required to achieve it.
