The National Biodiversity Authority has released a new set of rules to manage sharing of benefits generated through the use of biological resources. The Biological Diversity (Access to biological Resources and Knowledge Associated thereto and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits) Regulation 2025 was approved by the Central government and …
On the beginning of conservation in India The idea of conservation was more of protection of wildlife. Protection is different from conservation, which includes management. Till the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were no real wildlife laws pertaining to the entire country. In 1971, the then prime minister Indira …
"this is more easily said than done," says Daniels of mssrf . Whether it is the Korkus in the Melghat Tiger Reserve, the Maldharis in Gir National Park or the Van Gujjars in the proposed Rajaji National Park, most of these communities are under tremendous pressure to give up their …
The Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur, Rajasthan is known as much for controversies as for the famous Siberian Crane, which migrates to the park every winter. Succumbing to pressures from environmentalists and scientists of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), including the well-known ornithologist Salim Ali, the region was …
Clearly, human pressure over the centuries have influenced the way in which several present-day ecosystems have shaped up. Suddenly lifting this pressure can alter the dynamics of these ecosystems, which may actually go against the objectives of conservation. Therefore, to manage a np , it is very important to first …
While there are several reports every year of marauding elephants trampling numerous people to death and destroying crops, there are cases when science has come to the rescue. Wildlife scientist Sushant Choudhary and his team at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, found that 40 per cent of the human-elephant …
It is not the kind of death that makes a front-page story in a newspaper. Actually, it does not make news at all in most of India. Bhawani Ram is another name in the list of people who have been killed by wild animals. Had it been the killing of …
For British historians and administrators, Indian villages were self-sustaining units and they termed these units as village republics. Later, this terminology was done away with by historians and sociologists. Although utopian, villages situated along the Arvari river in Alwar district, Rajasthan, have retained the basic essence of a "self-sustaining republic,'
an ardent follower of Gandhian principles, Narayan Hazary's work reflects the magnanimity and vision of his mentor. Born in Kesharpur, a small village situated in the foothills of Binhagiri in Nayagarh district, Orissa, Hazary, 63, has been working since his late teens to restore prosperity in his village. Today, thanks …
traditional knowledge refers to the unique local knowledge existing within and developed around the specific conditions of people indigenous to a particular geographic area. All members of a community have traditional knowledge about the ecology: elders, women, men and children. However, the quantity and quality of traditional knowledge possessed by …
despite demands by 11 indigenous peoples' organisations to suspend the us $2.5 million us government-funded bioprospecting programme, the University of Georgia has refused to wind up its activities in Chiapas, Mexico. The objective of the five-year project is to study thousands of plants and microorganisms used for medicinal purposes by …
The Union government has introduced a clause in the amended Patents Bill that gives oral traditions the status of documented knowledge. The Bill does not allow any foreign company to seek a patent on India's traditional practices in the area of medicine or any knowledge-based activity. This move has been …
of the nearly 39,000 tanks that recharge the groundwater in Tamil Nadu, more than 20,000 of them are small minor irrigation tanks. The level of water in these tanks is dependent on the vagaries of the weather. Most of the farmers of the area are entirely dependent on this system …
consider this. A small sleepy town on the top of a hill in the north of Nagaland. The mention of the town's name is met by blank looks for it is isolated not only geographically, but also from civilisation. None of the modern means of communication exists and, to top …
PATENT rights from local communities, the Karnataka government has reportedly restrained some scientists from documenting biodiversity and indigenous assets of the people. The government is of the view that if the locals became aware of the commercial value of their produce they would go for patents and hence the restraint. …
A unique aquaculture-agriculture farming system has been developed by farmers at the Fulpur Thana in Mymensingh district of Bangladesh. They have developed this technique through their age-old practices, experiences and hands-on training received from local non-governmental organisations and the department of fisheries. Farmers at Fulpur have developed rice-fish farming system, …
Mashelkar: Traditional patent systems dealt with industrial products. There has now been a sudden shift from inanimate objects to animate ones like humans and plants. The issue has assumed importance all of a sudden because multinational pharmaceutical companies began picking up leads and developing new products without giving any credit …
lapodia is a small village of some 189 families in the Dudu block of Jaipur district in Rajasthan. Located in a semi-arid area, the residents of Lapodia are primarily agro-pastoralists, and their livestock subsists on the pastures in the neighbouring areas. In the past four-five years, the people of this …
Sosobala Mbatha, South Africa's most famous traditional healer, will share his knowledge of Zulu indigenous medicine with his counterparts in the us . Mbatha has been invited to New York by American Traditional Healers for a series of meetings during which they hope to pool information. "By collaborating with other …
thirty-one years ago, Science magazine published the famous article on the tragedy of the commons by Garrett Hardin. The commons were defined as an expanse of land under collective or open use. Hardin's article argued that the commons necessarily collapse because of the inherent selfishness of people over shared resources. …
