The United Nation's ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (cop 9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd) was recently held in Bonn, Germany. Amidst contentions relating to bio-fuels and abs (Access and Benefit Sharing), Meena Gupta, secretary, ministry for environment and forests, finds time to give an update on India's position on these issues to Yashvendra Singh How was cop 9 for India? For India, the meeting has gone well. One of the issues India was concerned about was abs, where we wanted a legally-binding instrument. That has been agreed to, but the details need to be worked out, and that will be done over the next two years. This is certainly a plus point for India. The other area of interest to us was that of forest biodiversity. We were keen to have capacity building and technology sharing among different countries in this area. This aspect too has been covered. So, by and large, we are happy. But demand for genetic resources within India outstrips supply by eight times. So should India be a party to abs and share its resources with the outside world? The demand will always be more than the supply. This is why initiatives such as the Plant Medicinal Boards are being taken and more medicinal plants grown. Our aim, therefore, is to ensure that these medicinal plants are sustainably harvested and that the supply keeps pace with demand. This is in fact the whole purpose of the National Biodiversity Act - sustainable harvesting. There will always be the problem of demand outstripping supply, but we should also curb unnecessary demand. It is alleged that a strong jatropha lobby is forcing the government to promote its cultivation as a bio-fuel crop, despite the challenge of food shortage. It is not that the government is pushing jatropha. It is just that the ministry for environment wrote to the states under the national afforestation programme that they can grow the plant in soils where nothing else grows. So, it is being grown only in marginal lands where nothing else grows, and diverting crop lands for its cultivation is definitely not our objective. Besides, we tried other plants also but, due to certain reasons, they were not as successful as jatropha. How do you view the funding from Global Environment Facility? We don't feel the funding is enough at all. Also, the procedure is cumbersome and takes a lot of time. Though it is becoming simpler, of late, it is still difficult to get those funds. Now, they have divided the funds for different purposes - climate change, biodiversity and desertification - which make it less cumbersome. The tiger population has dwindled rapidly to the median figure of 1,411. What steps are being taken to protect the animal? What has happened in Project Tiger is that, within the protected areas (national parks and tiger sanctuaries), their number has been more or less the same. It is the in-between areas where it has gone down because those areas are not protected and there is a lot of human intervention in the form of cultivation. It is here that tiger numbers have gone down sharply. So, our effort is to protect these areas better. To start off with, we have had more reserves in the latest National Tiger Conservation Authority meeting, wherein we agreed in principle to declare four-five more areas as tiger reserves. Then we are trying to establish a link between these areas because if these reserves are totally islanded then the animal population will die out in the absence of intermixing of the gene pool. Another challenge is that of increasing tourism activity around the protected areas. We need to have some regulation on how this buffer area around the reserve is to be used. We just can't have hoards of people coming in. But the compensation amount under Project Tiger is so low it doesn't encourage relocation. What is your take on this? Yes, that is true. We have, therefore, recently revised the compensation to Rsl0 lakh from the earlier Rsl lakh per family. After substantially enhancing the amount, we are now finding that a lot of people are willing to move out. The total amount of money towards this exercise hasn't been provided yet, but we have got the commitment from the Planning Commission that the money will be made available as we make progress. There are about 270 villages that would be covered under this initiative.