Biodiversity A vision towards sustainability

Biological Diversity’ which came from Walter G. Rosen coined the word ‘Biodiversity’, which was then stamped in June 1992 at Rio de Janeiro during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).
Biological diversity or ‘biodiversity’ refers to the variety and variability of life on earth. Biodiversity is expressed at three levels; a) genetic diversity, b) species diversity and c) ecosystem diversity. Its direct and indirect services are crucial for the sustenance of life on this planet. Biodiversity ensures security of food, fuel, shelter, medicines and other products which are vital for our survival. The protection of declining biodiversity and need for economic security is a major concern of highly populated tropical countries and they face immense pressure for its upward mobility. India being a tropical region, dives in the same pool and its biodiversity is under severe pressure due to complex interactions a among land use change, other human economic activities, and climate change. Preservation and restoration of biodiversity is perhaps the cheapest and the least risky way to mitigate the impacts of threats such as climate change, diminishing food and nutritional security, declining economy, absence of affordable healthcare, rising zoonotic diseases and lack of capacity to address these issues.
Patrick Geddes has mentions of biodiversity in his works. Originally trained as a biologist, Geddes came to think the process of city growth as an evolving organism – one in which every generation makes its own contribution to the physical space.
He analysed cityscape from its spatial and monumental appearance – emphasizing on the aesthetic values of the history of the city. Geddes introduced a social dimension to the process of analysis, which he called ‘civic survey’, and drawing on established, medical practices and dicta, such as ‘diagnosis before treatment’ and ‘conservative treatment’, he described a process for adapting historic buildings and urban space to modern requirements that focused on minimal intervention in existing conditions and maintenance of the already existing qualities in the environment. The 19th century, he argued, was an age of “carboniferous capitalism” based on non-renewable resources and polluting in its impacts. Produced out of the exhaustion of nature and natural resources, the paleotechnic age had seen the dominance of humans by Machine, by Finance, and by Militarism. But Geddes hoped for a new, neotechnic age based on solar energy and on long lasting alloys, marked by “its better use of resources and population towards the betterment of man and his environment together.”
India has a rich and varied heritage of biodiversity, encompassing a wide spectrum of habitats from tropical rain forests to alpine vegetation and from temperate to coastal wetlands. India is one of the 12-mega diversity countries in the world.
Government of India 2000 records 47000 species of plants and 81000 species of animals, which is about 7 per cent and 6.5 per cent respectively of global flora and fauna. Centre of origin. A large number of species are known to have originated in India. India has been the centre of origin of 166 species of crop plants and 320 species of wild species of wild relative of cultivated crops. Nearly 5000 species of flowering plants had their origin in India.
The biodiversity of an area influences every aspect of the lives of people who inhabit it. Their living space and their livelihoods depend on the type of ecosystem.
Even people living in urban areas are dependent on the ecological services provided by the wilderness. We frequently don’t see this in everyday life as it is not necessarily overt. It is linked with every service that nature provides us. The quality of water we drink and use, the air we breathe, the soil on which our food grows are all influenced by a wide variety of living organisms, both plants and animals and the ecosystem of which each species is linked with in nature. While it is well known that plant life removes carbon dioxide and releases the oxygen we breathe, it is less obvious that fungi, small soil invertebrates and even microbes are essential for plants to grow. That a natural forest maintains the water in the river after the monsoon, or that the absence of ants could destroy life on earth, are to be appreciated to understand how we are completely dependent on the living ‘web of life’ on earth. The wilderness is an outcome of a long evolutionary process that has created an unimaginably large diversity of living species, their genetic differences and the various
ecosystems on earth in which all living creatures live.
This includes mankind as well. Think about this and we cannot but want to protect out earth’s unique biodiversity. We are highly dependent on these living resources.
It has become obvious that the preservation of biological resources is essential for the well-being and the long-term survival of mankind. This diversity of living organisms which is present in the wilderness, as well as in our crops and livestock, plays a major role in human ‘development’. The preservation of ‘biodiversity’ is therefore integral to any strategy that aims at improving the quality of
human life.

Government of India 2000 records 47000 species of plants and 81000 species of animals, which is about 7 per cent and 6.5 per cent respectively of global flora and fauna. Centre of origin. A large number of species are known to have originated in India. India has been the centre of origin of 166 species of crop plants and 320 species of wild species of wild relative of cultivated crops. Nearly 5000 species of flowering plants had their origin in India