People's Biodiversity Register making tardy progress

Even though Karnataka was a pioneer in bringing out the first People's Biodiversity Register (PBR) way back in 1996/7 as part of its conservation efforts, the State is yet to gain momentum in spreading this to all the Panchayats.

PBR is brought out by the Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC) in each panchayat under the guidance of the State Biodiversity Board (SBB). It was formed after India signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992 and enacted the India Biological Diversity Act on April 15, 2004.

Karnataka  Biodiversity Board member secretary K S Sugara said Karnataka constituted SBB on August 1, 2003 and till now brought out around 220 PBRs.

“Even before biodiversity made an entry intoadministrative parlance, Karnataka had made giant strides in various conservation activities.  Since we are working under various limitations, we concentrate more on fostering institutional setup for documentation, sustainable use and development of our rich biodiversity,” he said.

The PBR contains comprehensive information on the availability and knowledge of local biological resources, their medicinal or any other traditional knowledge associated with them. It also maintains data about the local vaids and practitioners who use these biological resources.

In the districts

Out of 33 districts in the State only 11,175 taluks and of the 5585 panchayats only 3542 have constituted BMCs in the State. Districts which constituted BMC include Bagalkot, Bijapur, Chitradurga, Dakshina Kannada, Davangere, Gadag, Hassan, Haveri, Mandya, Tumkur, and Uttara Kannada. Compared to neighbouring states, the percentage share of the State in constituting BMC is far from satisfactory.

Rather than creating more BMCs, the Board wants to concentrate more on the existing one to bring out PBRs to provide a vision for local level development. 

“We want to take into confidence the academic and student community to check the already collected data so that it can be used for bringing out PBRs for future development initiatives,” said Sugara.

Knowledge missing

According to T V Ramachandra of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, which gives guidelines in bringing out PBR for the State, said, “Lack of knowledge on the importance of biodiversity information can be the main reason restricting local self governments to set up BMCs and bringing out PBR for each panchayats.”

Revealing his experience in forming PBR with students participation in Uttara Kannada, Ramachandra said college and school teachers should me made members of BMCs through out the State.

“Documenting biodiversity should be made a compulsory annual affair for students in all institutions so that its upgradation with the help of technical committee can be made easy,” said Ramachandra.

Technical committee

Calling upon the importance of constituting technical committees under BMCs to scrutinise data collected for PBRs, Madhav Gadgil who guided CET in bringing out PBRs, said it is the responsibility of the SBB to constitute it.

“The State should form a mechanism to store the PBRs in appropriate formats so that its valuable information does not reach the hands of miscreants.”

But, till now, the SBB hasn't constituted technical committees because of lack of skilled persons.

“We need financial support and manpower support for efforts. We are also finding it difficult to find data collectors at the grass root level. At the SBB we do not even have a permanent chairman to look into its daily affairs,” said Sugara.