Kerala to mentor other states on saving biodiversity

Kerala will now mentor other states on biodiversity conservation, a National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) official said here on Tuesday.

NBA chairman Balakrishna Pisupati said Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB) has done a great job and would be given the role of a mentor to take up in other states what it has done in Thiruvananthapuram.

"KSBB has completed the formation of up to 1,000 biodiversity management committees in all local bodies. This is a feat no achieved by any other state," he told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

He said that KSBB is also preparing a people's biodiversity register.

The biodiversity management committee is a statutory panel of elected local government representatives and experts from village councils.

People's biodiversity register lists out flora and fauna and traditional knowledge of every village.

The NBA chairman also met Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and briefed him on first National Biodiversity Congress to be held in the state capital December 21-30.

Pisupati said that this meeting is of huge significance because this comes after the recent UN Conference of Parties (CoP) on biodiversity in Hyderabad, where 160 countries took part.