Author: Parveen Kaswan (Follow)
The Second Indian Biodiversity Congress (IBC 2012) is being organised at Bangalore, with the focal theme “Biodiversity of the Western Ghats- Challenges and Strategies for Conservation and Sustainable Management”. Now the Western Ghats has been declared as a Natural World Heritage by UNESCO, as areas representing pre-eminent spots of biodiversity that must be identified, protected and conserved by a global community.
Today IBC witnessed a lot of good talks, presentations, recommendations, studies, paper presentations and surveys conducted by different institutes and organizations. Also it acted(2nd day) as a good platform for many talks related with the topic of biodiversity in India and its different aspects.
Some of the Important topics discussed in the Congress on 2nd day:
TKDL - Currently Traditional Knowledge Digital Library is not available in the public domain, it is available only for restricted use for IPR purposes. There is a big demand for opening this system for the public. TKDL is not protected by any legal law. As TKDL has a big amount of data in the system, there are chances of misuse of this system but currently there is no such legal provision to counter or decide punishment. Of course there is copyright law for protection of ‘database’ but ‘contents’ have another definition in this respect.
Currently according to India’s stand Traditional Knowledge is not a matter of Patenting, that is a good move but there is no such provision for derivatives of Traditional Knowledge. So there should be a clear definition and stand in the both cases. Even some parties have reservations for the specific definition of Traditional Knowledge in the proposed frameworks and bills.
There is a big concern about the double stand of International Institutions on the matter of ‘Principle of Precautions’ in case of Genetically Modified Crops. That is a major Principle behind the use and introduction of any type of GM crop in the market. A good example can be seen in the case of Beef Hormone controversy.
In India there are many type of policy, but we lack in Assessment and Benefit Sharing Policy(ABS). Due to lack of such a policy a lot of problems are there in defining the Assessment for a particular subject and what should be the course of Benefit sharing. So that the stand of the local community people can also be better understood.
Concern was also raised by the people on the matter of field trials of Genetically Modified organisms. As recently government is considering not working according to the recommendations made by the Supreme Court appointed five- member Technical Expert Committee(TEC) on GM crops. A 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all on-going trials of transgenic crops was recommended by the panel.
National Biodiversity Authority is not majorly concerned about the conservation of Biodiversity, and that is a major concern.
From last day of Bio diversity Congress:
Talking about Green Economy and Gadgil Report Recommendations:
Dignitaries on concluding ceremony:
(Points are based on Observations in the congress and matter of Personal understanding of our member , and cannot be copied)
Summary of recent TEC Report on GM Crops
Thank you very much…. such a thing is not available anywhere