Failure to cut GHG emissions is putting species conservation in eastern Himalayas at risk
- May 18, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Failure to cut GHG emissions is putting species conservation in eastern Himalayas at risk
Subject: Environment
Section: Climate Change
Context:
- A recent study on Eastern Himalayan protected areas exposed its vulnerabilities to climate change and emphasized the need for conservation
- As much as 36% of 46 protected areas in the eastern Himalayas are highly vulnerable to climate change
- Climatic changes in the past 50 years show up as a 1.3 degree Celsius rise in temperature, a decrease in summer monsoon rainfall and an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events.
- They are most pronounced in protected areas in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal.
- All protected areas (PAs) in the eastern Himalayas shelter at least one species at high risk of global extinction as per IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
- wildlife corridors and connectivity corridors that enable functional connectivity between these protected habitats are under threat due to human footprint and climate change
- The eastern Himalayan region, is rapidly losing forested habitats, with even many protected tracts under siege from rapacious mining and illegal logging.
- The 47 PAs (80% area of the total PA network) in this region, often embedded in a mosaic of agricultural fields, pasture lands, human settlements and infrastructure.
- The findings have implications for India, party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, amid the push to conserve 30% of Earth’s land and sea areas by 2030 (“30 by 30” plan of the proposed post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework)
- Mouling National Park, on the bank of the Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh, home to takins, serrows and monals, saw a 1 deg C rise in its average annual temperature and an increase of 1.5 deg C in the average temperature in the coldest season.
- Frog diversity along the Teesta river’s path through the mountains and plains are vulnerable to a wavering climate
- PAs in Assam (Manas, Kaziranga), Arunachal Pradesh (Pakhui wildlife sanctuary- highway construction affects its tiger habitat) and West Bengal (Jaldapara National park – poaching threatened Rhino population )
- High human population density is a major concern for Kaziranga National Park in Assam and Gorumara Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal.
- High Population density of forest fringe communities in little forest land or resources were available outside PAs such as in Buxa Tiger Reserve in north Bengal tiger population improved due to conservation activities
Terai needs more attention
- PAs in Terai grassland and forest ecosystems at the foothills and low elevations, such as those in Assam, shelter a high number of threatened species requiring greater conservation efforts and high species vulnerability.
- For example, Manas Tiger Reserve is home to 13 critically endangered, 28 endangered, and 44 vulnerable vertebrate species.
- Others in that league include Kaziranga, Nameri National Park, and Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary.
- A major stronghold of the one-horned rhino, Kaziranga is home to several species like the Bengal tiger, Asian elephant, wild water buffalo, gaur, sambar deer, hog deer, and the hoolock gibbon.
- The Terai’s complexity in Assam also reflects the Bramhaputra river’s dynamic nature and the landscape which is “subject to both montane effects as well as the plains effects and human interactions and high cultural diversity” which has also given rise to conflicts.
What needs to be done?
- the Indian Himalayan region – “needs to be comprehensively managed by ensuring species protection across the entire region”
- Protected areas cannot be viewed in isolation and landscape connectivity is equally important for the dispersal of species.
- “Corridors need to be strengthened and secured through legal mechanisms (as in the case of Bhutan and Europe) and awareness, research and capacity building to secure such areas are needed in the long term
- landscapes outside PAs in central India, the idea of protected areas as “networks” rather than isolated sites is gaining traction in the conservation discourse.
- Ecoregions are areas with similar ecosystems and the same type, quality and quantity of environmental resources.
- While the Global Biodiversity Framework is still evolving, to secure larger areas, the OECM strategy (other effective area-based conservation measures) needs to be acknowledged and implemented at the earliest to formally recognise community conserved areas.
- “India is on a strong wicket given the history of community conserved areas in the Himalayas, it is now time to formally recognise and strengthen such shared governance mechanisms