Friday, November 25, 2011

India ranked 67 in global hunger index


India ranked 67 in global hunger index
Anila Backer
Sruthy Gopal

  The session on bio-resources comprised of talks by eminent professors, Pramod Tandon, Amit Ghosh and Subodh Sharma.Prof. Kasturi Dutta, chaired the session.
   Prof. Tandon spoke on ‘Plant resources of India: Potentials for future development’. “India has been ranked 67 in Global Hunger Index and is home to 42% of world’s underweight children”, he said. But if conserved, India with her big bargaining power of biodiversity can become one among the most powerful countries in the 21st century. He pointed out population explosion and climate change as the major threats to biodiversity.
  Prof. Amit Ghosh spoke on ‘Exploring Microbial Diversity for Novel products’. He emphasised on the relation between richness of biodiversity and richness of the nation. “For the discovery of useful components we have to capture useful aspects of the world’s biological diversity in order to apply them in industrial endeavours, medicine, and in other areas of use. But India is a little away from industrial exploitation”, he said.
  Prof. Subodh Sharma explained on the government initiatives to tackle the climate change challenges in his speech on ‘sustainable management of biodiversity in the context of climate change- issues, challenges and response’. The Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment(INCCA), comprising of 127 institutions and 220 scientists are doing studies on the impact of climate change in water resources, agriculture, forest and ecosystem, coastal zone, society and human settlement and human health. The climate changes will have serious impacts like extreme rise in temperature and precipitation, rise in sea level and rise in concentration of carbon dioxide and green house gas. National action plan comprising of National Water Mission, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem and the National Mission for a Green India are formed for the sustainable management of biodiversity in the light of challenges due to climate change.

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