Biodiversity management is in transition

Biodiversity management is in transition

Subject :Environment

Section: Biodiversity

Context:

• The recently concluded Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly has made it clear that meeting the targets and goals set down by the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for biodiversity conservation is possible only by changing strategy.

Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF):

• The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was ratified.
• This is the first time that a separate fund has been created under GEF.
• GEF8 has a total of $1.4 billion available for action on three major environmental issues: Climate, biodiversity and pollution till 2026.
• Biodiversity is set to receive the maximum amount — 47 per cent — of GEF8 funds.
• Key features of this fund:
  • This fund can accept donations from all sources — private, philanthropy and governments — unlike GEF, which could avail only Official Development Assistance.
  • The decision has been taken to provide funds directly to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) in the implementation of GBF.
    • As much as 20 percent of the funds with the GBFF would be made available for activities carried out by IPLCs.
    • IPLCs manage at least 43.5 million square kilometre (32 per cent of global land) in 87 countries but less than 1 percent of funding for climate and biodiversity protection actually reaches them.
    • IPLCs occupy the very land that countries are trying to protect.
    • These protection measures are known as Other Effective Conservation Measures and these would be used to protect indigenous and traditional territories along with private land.
  • Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries would also receive special treatment under the GBFF and they will receive more than a third of the fund’s resources.

Role of the Indigenous People In Conservation:

• Conserving Natural Flora: The magico-religious belief of plants’ tribal communities as a god and goddess habitat leads to their conservation in their natural habitat.
  • Further, a wide variety of plants such as crop plants, wild fruits, seeds, bulb, roots and tubers are conserved by the ethnic and indigenous people as they have to depend on these sources for edible purposes.
• Application of Traditional Knowledge: Indigenous people and biodiversity complement each other.
  • Over time, the rural communities have gathered a pool of indigenous knowledge for the cultivation of the medicinal plants and their propagation.
  • These plants conserved are antidotes to snake bites and scorpion bites or even for broken bones or orthopaedic treatments.
• Conserving the Sacred Groves: India’s ethnic people have played a vital role in preserving the biodiversity of several virgin forests and have conserved flora and fauna in sacred groves of tribals. Otherwise, these flora and fauna might have disappeared from the natural ecosystem.

For details of Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: https://optimizeias.com/cop15-kunming-montreal-global-biodiversity-framework-adopted/