Biodiversity body under attack
The National Biodiversity Authority has come under attack for its failure to take a stand and determine the exact percentage of equitable benefit sharing with regard to coal producers and other companies under the provisions of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
Members of Biodiversity Management Committees (BMC), who came here from different parts of the state to attend the state-level function to mark the International Biodiversity Day at the Academy of Administration here on Wednesday were unanimous in targeting the NBA and even the Union ministry of environment and forests for not taking steps under Section 21 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, which confers the powers to the National Biodiversity Authority to determine equitable benefit sharing with the community to meet the larger goal of promoting conservation, sustainable use of biological diversity, including preservation of habitats, conservation of land races, folk varieties and cultivar, domesticated stocks and breeds of animals and micro-organisms and chronicling of knowledge related to biodiversity.
A BMC member even went to the extent of saying that the Congress-led UPA Government is not interested in carrying forward in letter and spirit the mandate of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. After NBA’s continuous failure to take a stand on sharing of benefits by users of resources, the coal companies have now taken the stand that coal is not a biological resource and they are not supposed to take any permission to carry out their operations under Section 24 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, he said adding, as a consequence the larger community is being denied revenue running into thousands of crores.
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