COMPETITIONS FOR CONSERVATION -  A Campaign to Save Biodiversity
Anil K. Gupta

Conservation of biodiversity is difficult without the participation of all sections of society.  Some curiosity and a sense of commitment have to be generated if children are to be involved.  Conservation is also difficult, if the process does not build upon existing knowledge.  However, current perceptions on knowledge and intelligence exclude a vast majority from playing  a more significant role in decision-making.  It is common for us to dismiss those who did not get education  as we know it, as unskilled.

It is indeed a very strange way of designing future developmental options that those who posses knowledge of a subject of great global concern are labelled ‘unskilled’ and made to unlearn all this naturally imbibed knowledge while at the same time, huge sums of money are spent on teaching those who did not learn it ‘naturally’.

Holding biodiversity  contests may be an answer.  The competitive spirit would help achieve some other ends as well.  Children as well as adults might discover  that those  who excel in this field need not necessarily excel in other fields and vice versa.  A school drop-out might know far more about plants in grazing   fields, crop fields, on the bunds, common lands, roadsides, forests etc.  The student who stands first in class might not even have noticed all these.   The belief that rural or tribal  children are always  less knowledgeable than their urban counterparts can thus be dispelled.  It will also imply that leadership in nature related matters at least, should belong to the real leaders who excel in perception, classification  and cataloguing of natural diversity and its use.

Organizing contests was a response to many of the above questions.  It is necessary to organize such contests in different parts of the world as they would also provide an opportunity for nature and nature  dependent but economically disadvantaged groups in different societies to demonstrate their genius and win them greater respect among others.  These contests will help to network the excellence in nature perception and conservation across cultural boundaries the world over.  Eventually, the whole paradigm of development may undergo a transformation and we could start building upon what people know.  We have been organising contests among children and adults in different villages of India.

The Process
Announcements are made in advance, and the date, venue, time of the contest and prizes are announced through a simple pamphlet which also describes the goals, outcome and prizes.  On a particular day, all the children  of class one to seven are asked to bring samples of plants with whatever information they can gather about their uses.  Similarly, the dropouts and adults may be asked to bring the samples of plant parts or other natural resources.

Evaluation & Rewards
Several approaches can be used for evaluation but the following method seems better than any other.  A jury comprising a teacher, a voluntary worker (if available from the village or the community) and a herbalists (if available) or an extension worker or botanist (nearby college or research centre) and some other elders  would form a jury.  Separate juries would evaluate the students from different clusters of classes.  For instance, students of class one and two could go to one jury, third and fourth to another and so on.  The jury look at four key aspects of the submissions: (1) how many samples each participant has brought (in case of common plants, participants could be asked to bring just a list rather than the plant samples); (2) in how many cases the same have been listed; (3) in how many cases the habitat  of the plant is known and mentioned (sometimes parents help in the collection and when the students are quizzed randomly about the habitat they fumble; they lose points in such a case and, (4) the manner of presentation.  After grading is over, all the samples, with information about their uses, are displayed.  The idea behind this is that everybody gets to learn something new.  Observation on plants  which are indicators of the natural habitat and such other insights occur  in the most unobtrusive manner.  Agendas for conservation evolve without even having to suggest it.

SRISTI and the Honey Bee network have been sponsoring the token prizes so far. We would be most happy to continue  doing so.  We could also set up local committees or reputed ecologists, herbalists and scholars who value local knowledge and practitioners who believe in linking theory with practice.

Responsibility Towards Providers of Knowledge
The dissemination of collective knowledge in the community and even to non-participationts is our first responsibility.  Development of local language reports with illustrations and sketches of some interesting plants and names of prize winners would be the next step.  Protection of the intellectual property will have be sought in a manner which the community demands.  Some communities insist that knowledge  be shared as widely as possible.  We could look for potential collaborators for them in science or business who would like to add value to their knowledge.  The returns for such knowledge may be made to flow back to the community through trust, funds governed by community structures.  A great deal of experimentation is called for and no hard and fast rules can be suggested.  Transparency can indeed help transform the relationships within communities and outside.  There is no doubt that this has been one of the most cost-effective ways of pooling and disseminating ecological knowledge in the community.  It will be desirable that any publication arising out of such  work in any part of the world  gives credit to native scholars.  The fact that this has not been the practice  has caused some resentment among native scholars.  The chroncilers  cannot abrogate to themselves the authorship of ideas that have evolved through centuries of experimentation.  In some cases, the uses  may of course be new.  It is likely that many such uses may not be widespread and may have originated through experiment by an individual or two.  In such cases, acknowledgement of proprietary rights of such individuals will need to be balanced with that of the community preserving the diversity.  In some communities it is likely that the individual would endow the community with all rights that may accrue from the value addition.

Legal rights of the providers of this knowledge must be protected under Plant Breeders’ Rights, Farmers’ Rights and the Patent Law.  Wild plants hitherto excluded from protection available to land races under UPOV 1978 may have to be extended this benefit, especially wild plants with specific uses.

We have sometimes organised painting competitions.  Children who do not get prizes in the biodiversity contest may get one in the painting competition.  In one case, we asked the children to also contribute folk songs, riddles, puzzles, stories etc., related to nature.  Some of these songs are a moving account of eco-ethics.

Outcome
The children who excel could perhaps become the future leaders of biodiversity conservation programmes.  Significantly, in almost all the cases, the top winners are from very poor backgrounds.  (Who else spends so much time with plants anyway?).  Right now, however, there is not much of a career option for these children, at least in the developing world.  Respect for this kind of knowledge diminishing even in the  native communities is more important than the erosion of biodiversity itself.  It is like losing the legend to a map:  one is lost despite possessing such a map.

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