HYDERABAD: Four years after Hyderabad became the first city in India to have implemented City Biodiversity Index (CBI), there has been no report on whether city’s biodiversity index has gone up or degraded.
It was during the Conference of Parties-11 Convention on Biodiversity (CoB) here in 2012 that the first CBI was released on the host city. This is in spite of the fact that the user’s manual designed by Convention on Biodiversity for City Biodiversity Index says the change in city’s biodiversity should be measured every two years.
In Hyderabad, the responsibility to update CBI lies with Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation. In fact, regular updating of CBI and conservation of biodiversity was the main reason for establishing an urban biodiversity wing in GHMC.
According to sources, in 2014 GHMC reported an increase in CBI by a few points, attributed mainly to the ‘education and awareness’ programmes conducted in the city on biodiversity, one of the parameters for scoring. However, the report was not made public. In 2012 Hyderabad scored 36 out of 92 points on the index.
When contacted, a Telangana State Biodiversity Board member said, “In 2012 Hyderabad had hosted the Convention on Biodiversity and, as the host, the city was to have the City Biodiversity Index which the government also took up actively. However, since then there has been no communication or work regarding updating of the index.”
Senior officials of the urban biodiversity wing of GHMC too were clueless about the existence of the index and just said that they were planting saplings in the city as part of Telangana ku Haritha Haaram.