Coordination, convergence, connect to corporate key to conserve biodiversity: NBA chairman
Kolkata became the first major metropolitan city in India to prepare a detailed register of biodiversity, Mayor Firhad Hakim claimed recently.
Hakim May 21 unveiled the 520-page documentation of 399 plant and 283 animal species at the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) headquarters. The species include:
The People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR), which details flora and fauna forms within the city as well as its land uses and human activities, has been prepared by KMC’s Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC). It was supervised by West Bengal’s biodiversity board with the help of non-profits.
a claim subsequently reiterated by state environment minister in the international biodiversity day programme on Sunday being organised by state biodiversity board.
Hakim claimed the document will be key in fighting climate change in the eastern India’s largest city, which has increasingly faced the brunt of inclement weather.
KMC was considering setting up urban forestry zones to improve the Kolkata’s greenery quotient, Hakim said. Stringent orders have been passed to both the police and the civic body’s staff to protect water bodies and their biodiversity, he claimed.
The Forest Survey of India’s recent report had flagged the West Bengal Capital for the least greenery among all metro cities.
National Biodiversity Authority Chairman VB Mathur ratified Hakim’s claim and welcomed the effort to document urban biodiversity. He stressed on ‘C4’ — cooperation, coordination, convergence and connect — promote biodiversity in the country.
“Kolkata is definitely the first major metro to prepare a PBR. Chandigarh and Indore are other important cities to have prepared the document,” Mathur told Down to Earth.
A coordination process among 10 state departments has been put in place to conserve and promote biodiversity, said Himadri Sekhar Debnath, who chairs the state biodiversity board. “We are keen to support KMC in setting up biodiversity parks,” he told DTE.
The board, along with Calcutta University’s botany department, is working to promote microbial fertilisers and pesticides in West Bengal, Debnath said. He claimed those cost only a tenth of existing chemical fertiliser-based cultivation and helped the ecology.
He said these were being pushed in cultivation of traditional crops in five districts:
“We have cultivated several paddy varieties for a season on nearly 500 acres, where about 600 farers worked, and found not only the cost has significantly reduced but also that productivity remained unchanged, rather increased in some areas,” said Biswajit Mahakur, who is associated with non-profit Joygopalpur Gram Vikash Kendra in Sundarban’s Basanti area.
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