![Sarus cranes in Delhi’s Najafgarh wetland [Image by Neha Sinha]](/sites/default/files/styles/pro_article_big/public/article_images/Flamingo-silhouette-2-1024x683.jpg?itok=RjbosT9F)
Wetlands in Delhi and Haryana, home to hundreds of species of birds, face serious threats from pollution and encroachment; official recognition could be an important step towards conservation. Read Article
Natural and managed ecosystems in India provide a diverse range of ecosystem services across local, regional and national scales. Different landscapes across the Indian sub-continent support different levels and kinds of biodiversity, and vary in the extent to which they provide multiple ecosystem services to dependent human communities. Biodiversity underpins all of these ecosystem services. India’s ecological security is contingent on the continued ability of ecosystems to provide irreplaceable ecosystem services for the well-being, livelihoods and sustainable economic development of its citizens. Furthermore, anthropogenic impacts in India— both on biodiversity and on landscapes— have been significantly negative. However, multi-disciplinary and spatially explicit data on the kinds and extent of ecosystem services provided by these different landscapes is currently lacking or not easily accessible to policy and decision makers. This information is critical for land-use planning, for managing and conserving India’s biodiversity and natural assets, and for restoring degraded lands.
This programme aims to investigate the impacts of rapidly changing biodiversity on food webs/cascades, as well as investigate how land-use change is impacting biodiversity and ecosystem services and their persistence.
This will be done with strong community participation and the extensive involvement of investigators from various parts of the country who will apply for competitive programmatic and small grants. Landscapes covered will include river systems and wetlands that are part of them. Specifically, this programme will quantify and map key ecosystem services in various landscapes and ecosystems across the country. This will allow researchers to determine linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem service provisioning in these landscapes. Armed with this information, future efforts can take into account trade-offs between different ecosystem services and the conditions that maximize ecosystem multi-functionality (i.e. provisioning of multiple ecosystem services) in different landscapes. In addition, development planners and policymakers will have the requisite tools to effectively manage biodiversity, design strategies to halt and reduce land degradation, identify strategies to better manage invasive species, develop protocols and guidelines for ecosystem restoration in different landscapes, and design action plans for landscape level, climate resilient and people-centric conservation action plans. In the process, India can emerge as a world leader in ecosystem based management and nature based solutions in economic development.
Various experts from diverse academic and professional backgrounds come together to build the team that looks after this programme
She is a molecular ecologist from Bangalore investigating population genetics and the evolutionary history of mammals at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). Today, her name is synonymous with tiger conservation in India.
He is Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). He has pioneered research on tropical savannah ecosystems and works on the Western Ghats.
He is Dean, School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and also Senior Adjunct Fellow at ATREE. He is a field ecohydrologist and landscape ecologist.
