Biodiversity Conservation
Need To Be Serious

By Pravin Gautam

BIODIVERSITY is now considered as the most important wealth for mankind in the 21st century. Nonetheless, the 19th century can be considered as the period of biodiversity depletion. A huge loss of biodiversity, plant and animal species as a consequence of human activities like agriculture, forest harvest and other development activities occured then. It is not that there was not any endeavour to conserve the biodiversity.

Important

In fact, considerable concern over the biodiversity was brought into the political arena in 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil. The Summit primarily focused on the biodiversity of tropical rainforests, as these are rich in number and species. Their conservation is important as many of such species have potential value as human food, fibres or as medicines and pesticides to meet the needs of future generations. Their conservation is also important for the reduction of carbondioxide emission to atmosphere, one of the causes for global warming, checking the genetic erosion and for ethical reasons.

Diversity of species of wild plants, animals with specific medicinal and other chemical properties, wild relatives of crops and domesticated animals, varieties of indigenous crop cultivars, animal breeds, which are the major genetic resources, are being used by the multinational biotechnology industries of the developed countries in the name of research. Traditional knowledge base of special properties and the availability of biodiversity elements have been exploited by these companies as a short way to find out such genetic resources with desired properties they required. The present trend in the research efforts of several Institute of developed world engaged in producing biotech products shows that they are following this cheaper and easier route.

The post Uruguay Round Intellectual Properties Rights (IPRs) regime under the World Trade Organi-sation (WTO) fold encouraged those companies by ensuring them greater monopoly over such invented biomaterials. In fact, one of the main thrusts of the globalisation, enforced by the developed countries through WTO mechanisms, can be viewed as a mechanism to ensure the control of these biotechnology industries and the few developed countries over the benefits derived from the exploitation of huge diversity of genetic resources by biotechnology. Incidentally, almost all of these genetic resources and animals and rich traditional knowledge base regarding them are found within the territories of developing countries.

In Nepal, wide altitudinal variation, from 60m above the sea level to 8850m, and diverse climatic conditions within it makes the physiography of the country diverse making it home to a rich variety of genetic resources. The country occupies only about 0.1 per cent of the total land area of the world, but it harbours high share of biodiversity; 2.6 per cent of Algae, 3.45 per cent of Pteridophytes, three per cent of non-flower plants, 2.6 per cent of flower plants, 2.65 per cent of butterflies and moths, 9.3 per cent of birds, and 4.5 per cent of mammals. Concerning other groups’ further study is still lacking.

Regarding agro-biodiversity, Nepal is a cradle of domistification and diversity of the world’s cultivated species. In Nepal, over 500 species are found. Among which, 200 species are cultivated and 20 species are used as food. Crops like rice, rice bean, eggplant, buckwheat, soybean, foxtail millet, citrus, mango etc. have high genetic diversity. Similarly, the diversity in the case of underutilised food crops and tropical fruit species is noteworthy. Nevertheless, going by the entire happening so far, Nepal has failed to realise and take initiatives to use this advantage. Despite of the fact that the Nepal is the major hotspot for the biodiversity, people at the local level are still unaware of this. Biodiversity status of the country is continuingly deteriorating due to increasing forest depletion and degradation, biotheft of species and the over utilisation of the natural resources. It remains, and shows trend to remain in future, a raw material, indigenous knowledge and the genetic resource supplying country for the developed countries in the so called era of liberalisation and globalisation. Experts says that if Nepal were to lose its remaining humid tropical forests; 10 species of highly valuable timber, six species of fibre plants, six species of edible fruit trees, four species of traditional medicinal herbs and some 50 species of trees and shrubs would be lost forever. This certainly would have adverse upshot on the different species of animals which rely on these for their livelihood.

In order to conserve the genetic diversity and to prevent biopiracy, there is a need to implement the suggestions/commitments of Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) faithfully. As the Nepal is in the process of accession to WTO, there is an immense need to fight against the possible gratuitous pressure put by the WTO to accept IPRs in their terms. Not only that, modifications in the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement on biodiversity issues as suggested by CBD, including the compulsion of recognising the country of origin of the genetic resource and justified benefit sharing with the person or group whose traditional knowledge led to a patentable innovations should be put forth. This needs strong awareness and demand campaigns to affect our decision-makers. On the one hand we have to fight to change the rules of the battle in our favour. On the other, we must continue fighting the battle under the present rules to minimise our loss. The latter demands a good documenting of our present biodiversity resources, traditional knowledge base and potentials to use such resources. The CBD identifies such tasks as one of the important instrument to protect a country’s interests in the IPRs regime. Nepal, despite being one of the remarkable signatories of CBD, the said tasks remain significantly incomplete. This needs an extensive countrywide network of grassroots level activities.

Process

Though it is delayed, the government has initiated a step towards the registration of the genetic resources. Nonetheless, registration process should be initiated from the grassroots level, as the biodiversity traditionally occurring in the locality and knowledge of local people regarding their management are coevolved components of the local ecosystem. Whether or not they are of specific global importance, they are very much important for the sustainable management of the local ecosystem. In being so, they are also important for global environment, as, global environment is ultimately the sum of the local environment. The documentation, therefore, should be pragmative such that documents could be - claimed as the proof of occurrence of different species, varieties of crops, breeds of domesticated animals and/or existence of specific traditional knowledge within the local territories; the information base to design and implement any conservation of sustainable management plan for the local environment; the source of information for scientific, socio-economic research and even for developing enterprises based on the use of locally available species, varieties, cultivars, breeds and traditional knowledge. For that reason, all the efforts that would be made should be participatory and should be able to involve all the concerned people.

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