Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

PROTECTING BIO-DIVERSITY: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA

Malini Pande

Abstract

It is imperative to protect the unique biological diversity of India if we wish to have sustainable development. To ensure environmental conservation we need to have biogeographically representative and effectively managed network of protected areas. In India government came up with the scheme of developing a network of Protected Areas (PAs) consisting of National Parks (NP) and Wildlife (WL) Sanctuaries covering the forests with relatively large population of the target species and associated ecological components for the purpose of protection of wildlife and their habitat. There has been a continuous degradation of our ecosystem due to which environmentalists have become very active in suggesting measures to undo the damage to the ecosystem. One way of consciously engaging the society in preserving and nurturing the environment is by increasing the protected area coverage. There have been some notable achievements in the field of environment protection by formulating and adopting strict legal provisions, but greater effort at sustaining and accelerating this effort at environment protection needs to be made if we wish to move forward towards the path of sustainable development. An interesting finding of this exploratory research is that the forests, the wildlife and the people are presently caught in a self perpetuating vicious cycle, which can only be broken by introducing effective and practical eco-development measures. A holistic, people friendly and inter-agency approach can contribute to environmental security, higher productivity and the well being of people.