On Monday, India formally took up the reins of conserving the world’s biological diversity with a call to nations to speed up the process of ratifying the Cartagena Protocol on biosafety and sustainable use of biological resources.
The change in guard took place at the start of the three-week Conference of Parties (COP-11) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) here. Union minister for environment and forests Jayanthi Natarajan, who inaugurated COP-11, took over the chair of the CBD from Japan.
India, as the host nation of COP-11, will now guide the 193-member Convention of Biological Diversity for the next two years in formulating scientifically-designed risk assessment of living modified organisms (LMOs), which include GM crops, and mobilisation of funds and resources to implement the CBD protocols on biosafety and biodiversity. The task is of utmost importance because at present there is no consensus on living modified organisms and the biological safety challenges they throw up. This is partly because many countries do not have the scientific resources to make proper risk assessments.