Wetland Biodiversity of India in Jeopardy

Wetland biodiversity of India in Jeopardy

Copyright 2010 Dr.P.Elayaraja

Indian Biodiversity

India is considered to be one of the mega biodiversity centers of the world containing diverse ecosystems with many novel organisms having new genes and secondary compounds.

The potentialities of these organisms need to be inventoried in immediate future for the benefit of humankind. This should be our highest priority since the pressure on the biodiversity is escalating in terms of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), both by the developed countries as well as our neighbours (who share a large number of species with us).

There is also a continued natural (global climatic changes) and biotic (including anthropogenic) pressure on our existing biodiversity. Hence, it is this crucial moment; the concerned people (scientists and decision makers) must reprioritize their focus more on inventories and sustainable use of country’s biotic wealth.

Wetlands

Wetlands are complex ecosystems, which form an interface between terrestrial and aquatic habitats. In this extent they are typical “ecotones”, which were recently defined as “transition zones between adjacent ecological systems, having a set of characteristics uniquely defined by space and time scales, and by the strength of the interactions between adjacent ecological systems”. Therefore, these ecotones are shown to be highly sensitive to environmental changes.

The species forming the communities of ecotones are either generalists coming from adjacent systems or specialists which are adapted to the specific ecological conditions prevailing. Whatever the origin of these species, they have strong physiological capacities to support particular environmental conditions of ecotones as wetlands.

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For these reasons, wetlands are good places to evaluate the intensity and importance of global change. Monitoring ecotones therefore provides means to detect, for example, the immediate biotic responses to regional and global climatic changes.

The Jeopardy

Unfortunately wetlands account among most threatened ecosystems of the world. In the 1960s, international organizations drew attention to their rapid regression, mainly due to land reclamation and major degradation caused by industrial or urban pressures. Indeed, the policies of numerous countries encouraged or even funded the conversion of wetland for agriculture, urbanism, port and industrial development, a range of activities, which culminate with a destruction of wetlands.

Copyright 2010 Dr.P.Elayaraja