Agrobiodiversity, agriculture and coastal biodiversity must receive close attention if climate adaptation were to be achieved in India, said Madhura Swaminathan, Chairperson of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, she said climate change remained the main agenda of the foundation and its Community Agrobiodiversity Centre (CAbC) in Wayanad, Kerala, whose silver jubilee is being celebrated with a hybrid international conference on “Biodiversity, Climate Change and Adaptation” on June 5 and 6.
She released a special newsletter that presented four major outcomes from the CAbC covering: ex-situ conservation of RET plants in the Western Ghats; conservation and protection of neglected and traditional tuber crops; conservation of vanishing rice varieties; and the focus on growing food in tribal homestead gardens.
G.N. Hariharan, Executive Director MSSRF, said agricultural scientist Professor M.S. Swaminathan had started the Wayanad Centre in the early 1990s with an aim to integrate conservation, cultivation, consumption and commerce – the four dimensions of sustainable genetic resource management into a practical approach to address the issue of sustainable agriculture.
V. Shakeela, Director of CAbC, said the Centre had documented and conserved rare, endemic, and threatened plant species of the Western Ghats, recording 2,100 flowering plants with 52 RED Data Species and nearly 900 Indian sub-continent endemics. It has described 39 plant species from the Kerala part of the Western Ghats that are new to science.
T. Jayaraman, Senior Fellow, Climate Change, MSSRF, said the conference was relevant in the present context since it was being organised closely after the IPCC Working Group reports were published in February. He said that biodiversity was threatened by increasing greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, and getting governments to spend within carbon budgets was important.
