Editorial 1 : Biodiversity is us and we are biodiversity
Introduction
The observance of International Biodiversity Day (May 22) was yet another reminder of the pivotal role our natural world plays in resolving the climate change crisis, which, along with the decline of biodiversity, poses an existential threat to our future.
Defining Biodiversity
- Biodiversity, the rich variety of life forms and their interconnections with each other and the environment, is everywhere: inside our bodies as ubiquitous microbiomes, in our backyards, villages, towns, and cities, and in remote wild places as well-organised ecological communities and ecosystems.
- Maintaining and enhancing biodiversity on land and in oceans is perhaps the least expensive mechanism to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so as to cool our land and oceans.
Importance of Biodiversity
- Mitigation of climate change is but one of the several benefits we derive from biodiversity. It also fulfils our basic needs for food, shelter, medicines, mental health, recreation, and spiritual enrichment.
- To face the continuing decline in the quality of our environment, we will need to rely more and more on solutions that draw upon biodiversity or nature, also called nature-based solutions to secure our future.
- It is biodiversity that will restore our degraded lands and polluted rivers and oceans and sustain our agriculture in the face of climate change.
- It is biodiversity that will form the basis of a new sustainable green economy.
- And it is biodiversity that will inspire our children to opt for a more humane, just, and hopeful future, which accords primacy to the living world.
Declining Biodiversity
- Despite the importance of biodiversity that ultimately sustains all human endeavours, we have been poor stewards for caring and nurturing life on earth.
- Globally as well as in India, we have failed to adequately conserve and manage our precious, irreplaceable natural heritage.
- Biodiversity is declining worldwide, and our last remaining, largely isolated ecosystems are degrading due to changes happening around them, such as loss of species, climate stressors, and continuous human pressures.
Nurturing and managing biodiversity
- In many ways, biodiversity is us and we are biodiversity. Thus, civil society must play a critical role in sustaining our biodiversity. A paradigm shift in the care of biodiversity, long overdue, must begin now, flowing from this International Biodiversity Day.
- India’s biodiversity is not only on land but also in waterbodies, rivers, deltas, and oceans. A rich array of our ecosystems is in the form of grasslands, savannas, alpine pastures, deserts, and other types of ecological communities.
- We must think of multifunctional landscapes, where aspirations, beliefs, traditional knowledge, and direct participation of local communities are central to the notion of conserving and sustaining life on earth.
Mainstreaming biodiversity
- This very mainstreaming of biodiversity is the goal of the proposed National Mission on Biodiversity and Human Wellbeing.
- India’s leading conservation biologists, working under the umbrella of the Biodiversity Collaborative based in Bengaluru, conceptualised the idea and developed a road map for the Mission approved in principle by the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Council.
- The Mission will enable our country to meet critical challenges in climate change, natural and regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem and public health using biodiversity and ecosystem services — usually referred to as nature-based solutions.
- The ultimate goal is to enhance and conserve biodiversity to foster human well-being; more specifically, to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty alleviation, nutrition and health, and environmental protection, and support an era of new green economy.
Way forward
Context
Farmers need to be given timely, accurate information on rainfall.
Background
- The Indian agriculture is considered a gamble against monsoon because agricultural activities
- over almost all parts of India are very much dependent upon the monsoon rainfall. In fact,
- monsoon is the axis around which the India economy revolves.
Monsoon critical for agriculture in India-
1. The monsoon is the lifeblood for India’s farm-dependent $2 trillion economy, as at least half the farmlands are rain-fed.
2. The country gets about 70% of annual rainfall in the June-September monsoon season, making it crucial for an estimated 263 million farmers.
3. About 800 million people live in villages and depend on agriculture, which accounts for about 15% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) and a failed monsoon can have a rippling effect on the country’s growth and economy.
4. Whereas, a normal to above-normal and well-distributed monsoon boosts farm output and farmers’ income, thereby increasing the demand for consumer and automotive products
in rural markets.
Impact of Monsoon on the Indian Economy
1. The monsoon has a direct impact on the country’s agricultural GDP. The planting of key kharif, or summer, crops like rice, sugar cane, pulses and oilseeds begins with the arrival of monsoon rains in June.
2. Summer crops account for almost half of India’s food output and a delayed or poor monsoon means supply issues and acceleration in food inflation, a key metric which influences Reserve Bank of India’s decision on interest rates.
3. A deficit monsoon could also lead to a drought-like situation, thereby affecting the rural household incomes, consumption and economic growth.
4. A poor monsoon not only leads to weak demand for fast-moving consumer goods, two-wheelers, tractors and rural housing sectors but also increases the imports of essential food staples and forces the government to take measures like farm loan waivers, thereby putting pressure on finances.
5. Most of the Indian power project installed on the Perennial Rivers. If monsoon fails, it would lower the water levels that have detrimental effects on the power generation as well as irrigation facilities.
6. Weak Monsoon is strongly correlated with receding water table which has worsened the farmer distress.
IMD Forecast for Monsoons 2023
- The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted a normal monsoon for 2023 with an expected rainfall of 96% of the long-term average (LPA) for the four-month season.
- The prediction comes as a relief to farmers across the country, who heavily rely on monsoon rain for irrigation and crop production.
- The IMD attributed the normal monsoon to the positive Indian Ocean Dipole and lower northern hemisphere snow cover, which are likely to counter the effects of the El Niño condition.
- IMD defines average, or normal, rainfall as ranging between 96% and 104% of a 50-year average of 87 cm (35 inches) for the four-month season.
- Some regions of northwest India and parts of west-central states and some pockets of north-eastern regions of the country are likely to get normal to below-normal rainfall, according to the first forecast of IMD on monsoon 2023.
Conclusion
- The need of hour is to use best technologies and services to boost production, income and reduce climate risks, it will also contribute to Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Therefore, a realistic evaluation of constraints and opportunities is critical for improvising ecological, technological, social and economic factors affecting farming community.