The slogan for this year’s Biodiversity Day 2022 is ‘Building a shared future for all life’. Biodiversity is a term used to describe the immense variety and variability of life on Earth and according to the Convention on Biological Diversity, it remains the answer to many sustainable development challenges we all face. One of the biggest lessons the pandemic taught us was that we have to develop a strong and sustainable ecosystem to ensure our survival in the face of any similar global threat in the future. And to achieve that, according to experts, we have to ensure the health of the biological diversity of planet Earth.
India is one of the world’s 12 mega-biodiversity centres, and the subcontinent one of the six Vavilovian centres of origin of species. Some 45,000 plant species and over 89,000 species of animals have been documented here, comprising some 6.5 per cent of all known wildlife.But unfortunately today, one-fifth of all plant species on land face annihilation in the next 20 years. A disappearing plant can take with it 10-30 dependent species such as insects, higher animals and even other plants. According to one estimate, we may already be losing 100 species a day. It is horrible!
Today, Everyone feels that Our greediness is one of the prime causes of this erosion of diversity. Never before has one species influenced the environmental conditions all over the planet to such a magnitude as today. Would you know, The human species now uses 40 per cent of the planet’s annual net photosynthesis production. Day by Day, the Loss and fragmentation of natural habitats, overexploitation of plant and animal species, the impact of exotics and invasive alien species, industrial effluents, climate change and, above all, the greed of man are causing the erosion. It is time to Think seriously!
