The economic system has to be recognised as a sub-system of the broader ecosystem of people and nature. The public and the scientific community must place a high value on the preservation of biological diversity because of its commercial and ecological importance. Products such as food, fibre, industrial compounds, fuels and drugs are presently obtained from a relatively few species; but new crops, new medicines and new industrial products are regularly being discovered. Ecological services such as air and water purification, soil formation and protection, carbon sequestration, re-charging of groundwater, protecting watersheds and buffering floods and droughts are important values of biodiversity. Forest foods are particularly important in coping with cyclical (seasonal) shortages and transitory shortages due to drought, illness or other external shocks.

The delivery of ecosystem services depends in many cases on the maintenance of biodiversity. For 50% of the people in India, whose incomes are directly dependent on natural resources, their protection is a matter of livelihood security. Investing in biodiversity and ecosystem management thus represents an important economic development strategy, a link not adequately recognised by India’s existing development model. The current compartmentalised treatment is pushing India to choose between development and conservation of nature.

As the ecosystem is made up of often unpredictable, complex, interactive and non linear dynamic systems; there are considerable challenges facing biodiversity conservation management strategies and policies. There is an urgent need to accept and deal with the requirement of protecting species and their habitats, and ecosystems and their services that are all continuously changing in space as well as time. A systemic and systematic approach encompassing all this appears to be the challenge. Identifying symbiotic relationships between species that deliver these services will be crucial as a first step for action designed to manage these systems.

Development Alternatives’ initiatives in the area of natural resource management include innovation of eco-solutions, implementation of programmes, development of technologies, building of capacities and enabling of supportive policy frameworks that emphasise the sustainable management and conservation of ecosystem services. q