Biodiversity summit: plea against separate bio norms

The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry has said that any move to have a separate biodiversity clearance or norms for development projects should be avoided. It said this in response to a statement made by the Union Minister for Environment and Forests,  Jayanthi Natarajan, ahead of the UN Summit on Biodiversity in Hyderabad, suggesting a separate biodiversity clearance or norms for the development projects.

R. V. Kanoria, President, FICCI said that “Adding additional layers of clearances may be counterproductive and result in diluting the positive sentiment arising out of the recent spate of reforms that the government has announced”.

The Minister had expressed her opinion to integrate biodiversity clearance into environment and forest or both clearances at whichever level it operates. However, the move to add biodiversity conservation as a new criterion to grant environment and forest clearance will further harden the process of obtaining green clearances, FICCI said.

It pointed out that the Biodiversity Act, 2002, had already made provision for assessing the environmental impact of a project on biological diversity and to avoid or minimize any adverse impact and provide for public participation in the assessment where appropriate .Pro GM stand opposed:

Green groups accused the Government on the other hand of canvassing GM technology rather than taking a scientifically objective stand in the matter of GM crops.

NGO Green peace on the other hand accused the Scientific Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of  talking of increased uptake of GM crops across the world despite the fact that figures on GM uptake have been widely contested. ''It is a shame that a scientific
body of this stature is canvassing  one technology and fails entirely in looking at the larger problems in food, farming and welfare of the citizens comprehensively, it said adding that the council was lamenting at the  disillusionment of the few scientists
involved in transgenics while completely overlooking at the severe distress of the millions of farmers which this technology fails to solve.

"It is high time that the scientific and policy circles in our country acknowledge that techno fixes cannot solve India's current hunger and agrarian distress issues,'' Greenpeace said.Recently the Parliamentary Standing Committee comprising   31 Members of Parliament
across party lines had in a report on GM crops   recommended  against any haste in the approval of GM crops.

It went to the extent of asking not to conduct open 'field trials under any garb'.  .