Events like the International Day for Biological Diversity provide uncommon opportunities to turn the attention of a range of stakeholders to think and act on biodiversity. Compared to 1992 when the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted in Rio de Janeiro, general awareness on biodiversity, ecosystems and their contributions to sustainable development has increased tremendously but still more needs to be done.

Tracing the history of the pre-Convention and Conventions processes, the formative stages of implementation, the 2010 biodiversity targets and the current Aichi biodiversity target related actions, the seminar on “25 Years of Action on Biological Diversity” called for future actions during the next decade. The seminar was attended by a range of stakeholders from students, local communities, policy makers, legal professional, scientists and members of the media with one key objective – how to make biodiversity a people-issue and not a science-issue.

The role of campaigns like Nature For All, the relevance of education and communication in reaching to larger stakeholder groups was highlighted with a request to the participants to celebrate biodiversity everyday.

Commemorating the day, a number of competitions were held for the students, professionals, local communities to highlight the importance of biodiversity in our day-to-day lives.

In addition, local biodiversity management committees (established under the Biological Diversity Act in India) were honored for their work in preparing local registers of bioresources, innovative approaches to conservation and establishing local level governance systems.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Balakrishna Pisupati, Regional Vice-Chair of IUCN CEC called for better engagement of youth in conservation action and suggested new and interesting curriculum to be developed to teach conservation – using subjects like data science, artificial intelligence, resource economics, biomimicry and others to make conservation and biodiversity science more attractive, relevant and progressive.

During the event, a story-book on biodiversity, in local language, the threatened species list of the Province and a set of fillers on biodiversity for use in national television were also launched.

The event ended with a call that nature is for all and it is our collective responsibility to conserve and protect our ecosystems and biodiversity.

For more information contact:  Dr. Balakrishna Pisupati, IUCN CEC Regional Vice-Chair, South and East Asia

Dr. Balakrishna Pisupati is an internationally renowned conservation and development specialist with close to three decades of experience working at national, regional and international levels, holding positions such as Vice-Chancellor, TransDisciplinary University (TDU, India), Chief of Biodiversity, Land Law and Governance programmes at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, Kenya), Senior Policy Fellow at Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI, Norway), Chairman, National Biodiversity Authority-Government of India (NBA, India), Coordinator, Biodiplomacy Programme at United Nations University (UNU-IAS, Japan), Head, Regional Biodiversity Programme for Asia at the World Conservation Union (IUCN, Sri Lanka). Currently, he is the Chairperson of FLEDGE