Over 30 members of youth groups, collectives, and environmental movements have urged the Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Board (TNBB) to develop a robust and reliable system to prepare the People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR), which is a compilation of locally-available bio-resources, such as plants, animals, birds, and micro-organisms.
In a letter to the TNBB and the National Biodiversity Authority, activists have raised concerns on the PBR for which the board had put out an advertisement calling for college students to participate in collecting biodiversity data for a duration of 20 days. “Data collected and processed arbitrarily in a short period of time by inexperienced students does not serve the purpose of the Biodiversity Act,” the activists said.
Further, the letter signed by members of Chennai Climate Action Group, Vettiver Collective, and other environmental groups, stated that as per the Biological Diversity Act 2002, biodiversity monitoring committees, which have to be formed in all local bodies, are responsible for compiling the PBR data. The activists, however, said that the committees were neither in place in all rural and urban local bodies nor were involved in compiling PBR data.
The youth groups have demanded that the TNBB should reconsider updating PBRs as there are no biodiversity monitoring committees and the State must direct the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department and Municipal Administration and Water Supply (MAWS) department to be involved in forming the committees.
“With the help of TNBB and other civil society organisations, proper training / capacity building should be provided to all the elected representatives of the local governments / BMC members to prepare the PBR with people participation,” the letter said.
