Management Perspectives

Understanding this topic is critical—especially when sustainability of the human race and our Mother Earth is threatened by the devastating, rapid march of climate change. Let me first try and answer the oft repeated question, “Why is bio-diversity so important and considered necessary for our survival?” In common parlance biodiversity is the variety of living things on planet Earth or in other words ‘the range or richness of life’ on Earth, right from the smallest genetic component to complex eco-systems. It includes the interplay of evolutionary, ecological, and cultural factors that support and maintain life.

As human beings, we are dependent on our external environment for all our needs of food, health and oxygen. We also need medicines from the earth. As we are aware, a big percentage of the global population— especially in India—depends on agriculture for their livelihood. The web of life on Earth all things I have mentioned here are highly interdependent. Agriculture is dependent on tiny microbes that live inside the soil.

Water gets cleaned when it passes through trees, bushes, and grass present in wetlands. Huge variety of insects provide an all-important biological service by pullulating our crops and without them a third or more of our agriculture globally would just die; and if that happens, large part of the human race and the animals will perish. The rich diversity of plants on land and in the oceans helps in the process of photosynthesis and maintaining the level of oxygen in the air for our survival. So biodiversity is not just a fad and not only for us to go as tourists to exotic places like the Amazon Rainforest and Galapagos Islands to look at beautiful plants, animals and birds—it is the very essence of stability of our life on Earth.

Let me mention here that the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador—a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean almost a thousand kilometers off the Ecuadorian coast—are famous for a wealth of unique plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Charles Darwin—who first published his theory ‘Evolution of Species’ in 1859— did a lot of work for his study in Galapagos. The Amazon rainforest, covering much of northwestern Brazil and extending into Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guiana— the world’s largest tropical rainforest, with an area of about 6.7 million sq. km—is most famous for its biodiversity.

It is criss-crossed by literally thousands of rivers, including the mighty Amazon. It has 40,000 plant species, 2,000 bird species and thousands of fish species, and is a big source of medicines for the international pharma research companies.

Despite massive poaching, illegal deforestation, commercial agriculture, logging, and mining, the rainforest is still a very big ‘carbon sink’. Medical Science has made amazing progress over the years—and enabled us to live longer and healthier lives— only because of the rich biodiversity in the plants and fungi. Organic and inorganic compounds derived from these are at the base of developing forever new drugs for treating all sorts of illnesses and handling pandemics. Let’s now move to ‘biodiversity hotspots’.

National Geographic has put down two strict criteria for a region to qualify as a hotspot- 1) It has to have a minimum of 1,500 endemic (not found anywhere else in the world) plants which makes it irreplaceable and 2) Only 1/3rd or less of its original vegetation still remains, that makes it a threatened area. These hotspots occupy less than 3 per cent of Earth’s land surface but support over 1/3rd of the ecosystem services and nearly half of the world’s plant species.

Even at the cost of repetition, let me emphasise again that ‘the human race and the planet Earth will not survive without such hotspots’! As of now there are only 30–40 designated hotspots in the world, starting with (i) the Andes Mountains along South America’s western side—probably the world’s most diverse of all.

About a sixth of all plant species in the world live in this region (ii) the entire country of New Zealand—that evolved in isolation and has thousands of plants and insects not found anywhere else in the world. More than 90 per cent of the insects and 80 per cent of the vascular plants in New Zealand are endemic to the region (iii) the Himalayan region is the third biggest hotspot! Instead of listing anymore international hotspots, let me turn to the recognised ones in India.

1.Himalayas: This mountain range—amongst the youngest mountains in the world— spans through the north and east of India, Bhutan, and parts of Nepal. The range is home to 163 endangered species, including the wild Asian water buffalo and the onehorned rhino. It also has around 10,000 plant species out of which 1,373 are endemic.

2.Indo-Burma Region: Encompassing a gargantuan area of 2.4 million sq km, this hotspot has witnessed recent discoveries of large mammal species such as the large- antlered muntjac and the annamite striped rabbit. It is also home to numerous threatened freshwater turtle species.

3.Western Ghats: Stretching along the western coast of India, the Western Ghats are known for their rich bio-diversity. They house a multitude of endemic species, including the Malabar civet and the Nilgiri tahr.

4.Sundaland: South of West Bengal and Bangladesh, this huge region covers the western half of Indonesia, Borneo, Sumatra, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and India’s Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It boasts diverse ecosystems including rainforests and coral reefs that support unique species like the Sumatran orangutan and the Javan rhino.

A big variety of common ayurvedic medicines comes from the India’s biodiversity hotspots. Western Ghats also has a rich variety of medicinal plants that are used in modern allopathic medicines. The ‘Silent Valley’ within the Western Ghats preserves true diversity of the region with nearly 700 species of medicinal herbs mostly used in the indigenous systems of medicine. The internationally famous epicurean plant lemon grass has also originated from this area.

Climate change, especially after it started taking center stage from around 2007, with former VP of USA Al Gore’s movie The Inconvenient Truth and even before that by the great work over seven decades and doomsday predictions of highly regarded environmentalists like Sir David Attenborough (winner of UN’s most prestigious environment award, ‘Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement’) has today become virtually a part of all discourse—governments, NGOs, civil society.

It threatens our very existence and the sustainability of the planet we live on. Under these grave circumstances, protecting hotspots all over the world is extremely important and I am delighted that an in-house magazine of DLF—India’s biggest real estate developer—has chosen biodiversity as the theme of this issue. It reinforces their resolve to protect the environment.