India and Biodiversity

To gain insights about the discussions that surround Biodiversity in India, I read Ashish Kothari's Understanding Biodiversity. The text gives a detailed background of Biodiversity management in India, the threats to Biodiversity and what measures have already been taken. It was a great way of understanding the subject with respect to the diversity that our country harbours based on availability of resources, various livelihoods, cultural differences, disparity in class and addresses the debate on Intellectual Property Rights on traditional knowledge. The book also cites examples of inspiring people and movements that have preserved and maintained biological diversity in India.

A comprehensive and concisely written study on the ecological issues in India from the National, Urban and Agricultural perspectives is Anil Agarwal's Politics of Environment. The study helped me identify a few topics that can be explored further.

The topics identified were:

Diversity gets transformed into Monocultures. This can be said for the cultural diversity in cities and the biological diversity in farms. Furthermore, cultural diversity is born out of biological diversity.

Urban migrants are not economic refugees but ecological refugees, displaced by building of dams, mining, deforestation, etc.

The biggest ally for an ecologically / socially sound environment is Womankind.

We do not yet know how to construct a social / economic / ecological indicator for urban residents to detect depleting biodiversity.

Of these topics, one will be explored further to shape the narrative of the storybook.