Date:08/12/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/12/08/stories/2006120813840500.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Call for plan to exploit medicinal plants

Staff Reporter

The focus must be on conservation of biodiversity: Kannaiyan

GREETING EACH OTHER: S. Natesh (from left) of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology; N.D. Tiwari, Member-Secretary of KBB; S. Kannaiyan, Chairman of NBA, and M D. Sanaulla, Secretary, Environment and Ecology, at a semina r in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: The export of medicinal plants from India is around Rs. 3,000 crore, but it is far behind China in terms of volume. With 30 per cent of global plant resources being found in the Western Ghats and the Himalayas, there should be a plan to commercially exploit them even as the biodiversity is protected, National Biodiversity Authority Chairman S. Kannaiyan has said.

Global strategy

Speaking at the inaugural session of a seminar on "Plant resources of the Western Ghats" here on Thursday, Prof. Kannaiyan said the seminar should examine how India could implement the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss as agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.

Conservation should be the basis on which India should prepare its future plans to compete with China in the global plant resources export market. India possessed rich flowering plant diversity with over 17,000 species of which 30 per cent were endemic, he said.

Private enterprise should be encouraged with buyback arrangement with the communities that were traditionally engaged in exploiting local resources so that the benefits of such commercial exploitation reached them, Prof. Kannaiyan said.

While the conservation work should never be abandoned, there should be a balanced and pragmatic approach towards adopting transgenic crops and plant varieties as the food security problems of the future were only set to multiply and land was a scarce resource. Productivity per hectare in India was much smaller than that of countries such as China, Japan and even Korea.

Boi-safety regime

India should make conservation, a well-planned bio-safety regime and judicious application of transgenic varieties to be food secure, he said.

The two-day workshop is being organised by the Karnataka Biodiversity Board.

The board was set up in 2003 with a mission to target conservation, sustainable utilisation and equitable benefit sharing.

It has set up over 575 biodiversity management committees in local bodies of 15 districts, becoming the first State to do so.

It is developing the Rastrakavi Kuvempu Bio-park in Shimoga as a model heritage site.

A mega project is under way focussing on the assessment and conservation of biodiversity in the coastal districts.