Daily Current Affairs for UPSC
Campaign to document biodiversity
(Syllabus-GS Paper 3,Biodiversity and conservation)
Context- In a step towards documentation and preservation of India’s rich biological diversity, the Union government has launched a national campaign for the updation and verification of the People’s Biodiversity Registers (PBR).
About People’s Biodiversity Register (PBRs):
- The PBRs or People’s Biodiversity Registers are a legal document containing comprehensive accounts on local bio-resources. They are created to record traditional knowledge and practices.
- The collaborative effort involves the Union ministry of Environment,Forest and Climate Change, the Goa State Biodiversity Board ,the National Biodiversity Authority and the Government of Goa.
- India has 2.67 PBRs created so far and the government hopes that they shall be a milestone in biodiversity conservation.The PBRs also reflect India’s efforts to save its resources from Biopiracy also known as scientific colonialism.
- In the absence of PBRs Indian products like Neem,turmeric, tamarind,basmati and Darjeeling tea have been patented by foreign firms for commercial exploitation.
- In order to protect the Biopiracy the UN agency, The WIPO-World Intellectual Property Organisation formed an intergovernmental committee on intellectual property,genetic resources,traditional resources and folklore.
- Under this agreement ,India has made the law i.e, the ‘Biodiversity Act 2002’, under which National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) was constituted.The NBA has so far constituted 2.77 lakh Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) across the country to document various aspects of biodiversity.
- This covers habitat conservation, preservation of land races, folk varieties and cultivars,domesticated stocks, and breeds of animals, microorganisms and the accumulation of knowledge related to local biological diversity.
- The BMCs consist of local elders, farmers and pastoralists, teachers and students. The data brought by the BMCS documents in different formats are standardized,digitized and transformed into e-PBR.
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