First Nat’l Conference On Urban Biodiversity Conservation In City | Indore News

Indore: The two-day-long first national conference on Urban Biodiversity Conservation hosted in Indore on Friday witnessed noted speakers sharing data and knowledge about present status of the natural world along with required efforts to protect the ecosystem.
“Biodiversity is a way of life as it is related to what we breathe, eat and drink. If we really want to make the cities green, sustainable and inclusive, our traditional planning system should have major changes while the focus should not only be on economic growth” Hitesh Vaidya, director of National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA, New Delhi), said.
He added that green-lungs of the cities should be created by planting trees while there is a need to not only protect water bodies but its catchment and wetland areas along with controlling pollution and check human interactions with wildlife to safeguard the biodiversity as without the same, human life will be miserable. “Therefore, administration of the cities should be relooked while they should be transferred power by making institutional hierarchy. Besides, the city’s planning should be integrated with provisions to protect biodiversity” he said.
In one of the sessions, Aniruddhe Mukherjee, principal secretary and commissioner at Environmental Planning and Coordination Organization (EPCO), along with other noted speakers spoke on water bodies, challenges to protect it and efforts to be taken to protect the same along with its catchment and wetland areas to save the biodiversity depending on the same. TNN