Wayanad completes biodiversity documentation

T. Nandakumar
Thiruvananthapuram,  
The Hindu, October 31, 2014 

Local self-government institutions in Wayanad district are now armed with an effective weapon against biopiracy. As many as 25 grama panchayats and one municipality in the district have completed the documentation of biodiversity.

The People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR) has been prepared for all the local bodies in Wayanad, making it the first district in Kerala to have completed the process. The PBRs have been submitted to the Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB), the custodian of the document.

Prepared through a participatory effort coordinated by the panchayat-level Biodiversity Management Committee, the PBR is a statutory document detailing floral and faunal diversity and its distribution in each local body. “The process involves a lengthy and exhaustive data collection exercise by an army of field workers, followed by compilation of the information,” K.P. Laladhas, Member Secretary, KSBB, said.

The PBR is designed to be an effective tool in planning for biodiversity conservation and development activities at the local level. “Regularly updated, it can help to keep a close tab on environmental degradation and species extinction,” Oommen V. Oommen, Chairman, KSBB, said.

Running into hundreds of pages, each register lists the agro biodiversity, wild biodiversity, aquatic biodiversity, and urban biodiversity in a local body, including trees, shrubs, climbers, crops, fruits, fodder plants, weeds, pests, domesticated animals, tubers, medicinal and ornamental plants, timber trees, culture fisheries, landscape, waterscape, soil type, wild relatives of crops, mammals, reptiles, and domesticated animals. Rare species are described along with pictures.

Traditional uses of biodiversity are also recorded in the PBR. Pointing to the failed move to patent the use of turmeric and neem in the U.S. and Europe, Prof. Laladhas said, “Documenting prior knowledge of the use of biological resources is important to check biopiracy and exploitation.”

Prof. Oommen said efforts were on to digitise the PBRs and update them periodically. The software for digitisation has been prepared by the Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala.

As many as 716 grama panchayats and nine municipalities in the State have submitted PBRs while the remaining 100 local bodies are collecting data.