CHENNAI: After years of delay, Tamil Nadu has set in motion the formation of block-level Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) by March-end. This is crucial to map the natural resources and protect them from illegal exploitation.
Though Tamil Nadu is one of the major States gifted with abundant biodiversity, the government has failed to document its flora and fauna in a systematic and scientific manner. Other southern States such as Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have already constituted the BMCs and are in the process of preparing People’s Biodiversity Registers.
A Udhayan, secretary, Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Board, told Express, on the sidelines of the launch of Access and Benefit Sharing Partnership Project with German cooperation (GIZ), “Yes, there was a delay in constituting BMCs due to various factors. However, what we are trying to do now would be more scientific and exhaustive mapping of bioresources compared to many other states. Tamil Nadu has 383 blocks and the BMC will be constituted in each of the blocks,” he said.
The role of the BMC is to promote conservation, sustainable use and documentation of biological diversity including preservation of habitats, conservation of land races, folk varieties and cultivars, domesticated stocks and breeds of animals and microorganisms and chronicling of knowledge relating to biological diversity. Meanwhile, the German government’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has chosen Tamil Nadu along with Maharashtra and Uttarakhand as pilot States for launch of the four-year Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) partnership project. The Union Environment Ministry, National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) and GIZ will be implementing partners.
Geetha Nayak, team leader, ABS project, GIZ, told Express that there was a need to regulate the access to biological resources. Section 26 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 talks about conservation and promotion of biological resources and development of areas from where such biological resources or knowledge associated thereto has been accessed and Section 23 empowers State boards to prohibit or restrict any such activity if it is of opinion that such activity is detrimental or contrary to the objectives of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity or equitable sharing of benefits arising out of such activity.
Dindigul C Sreeenivasan, Minister for Forests, has officially inaugurated the project and Nasimuddin, principal secretary, Environment and Forests Department, has candidly admitted that there was an unregulated access to the state’s bio-resources and the government was in the process of curbing it.
Forest cover in tribal districts
Traditionally, tribes have been an inseparable part of forest ecosystem. Forests are fulfilling the social, economic, cultural, religious and medical needs of the tribes. Therefore, it becomes very important to monitor and analyse the forest cover situation in the tribal areas. The total forest cover in the tribal districts is 7,165 km, which is 23.32 percent of the geographical area of the hill districts.
