WWF lessons for Northeast biodiversity conservation

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has pressed the alarm bell on "global double emergency" of climate and biodiversity crisis. The 'WWF (2022) Living Planet Report 2022 – Building a nature-positive society' has revealed that wildlife populations have dipped worldwide by 69% since 1970. It has cautioned that unless global warming is limited to 1.5 degree, climate change is likely to become the dominant cause of biodiversity loss in the coming decades. India's Northeast region being an important global biodiversity hotspot, state governments and communities in collaboration with Central government taking pro-active measures for biodiversity conservation will be critical to reversing the trend in the region. An alarming 83% dip of the monitored freshwater species population is cause for serious concern and calls for urgent attention of national governments and global stakeholders before it is too late. The data from the report shows that the highest regional decline of 94% was recorded in Latin America, followed by Africa with 66% and Asia Pacific region with 55%. The WWF Living Planet Index 2022, which tracks the abundance of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, included about 32,000 species, 11,000 more than the last edition of Living Planet Index published in 2020. The report states that these populations, or trends in relative abundance, are important because they give a snapshot of changes in an ecosystem and adds that "Essentially, declines in abundance are early warning indicators of overall ecosystem health. At the same time, population trends are responsive. Therefore, if conservation or policy measures are successful, species abundance trends will quickly show this", which also explains the importance of conservation initiatives and measures. It flags the concern that the species are most likely to face significant threats from agriculture, hunting, trapping and logging in Southeast Asia and others tropical regions, while pollution hotspots are more prominent in Europe. While the WWF report contains data for a period of 48 years, forest cover in India's Northeast depleted by 3,698 square kilometres over a period of ten years from 2011 to 2021 and of this 1,020 sq km being lost in the last two years. This also indicates the pace of loss of biodiversity in the region since 1970. With infrastructure projects such as hydropower projects, highways, hydrocarbon exploration and development being pushed aggressively to accelerate the pace of development, the loss of forest cover could rise posing grave threats to wildlife population. Rising human-animal conflict in the region is indicative of rapidly changing ecological landscape due to human activities. In the chapter "An urgent call to protect 80% of the Amazon by 2025" of the WWF report, Gregorio Diaz Mirabal and Zack Romo Paredes Holguer (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin – COICA), Alonso Córdova Arrieta (WWF-Peru) raised the apprehension that 26% of the Amazon, which is home to more than 500 indigenous communities and holds nearly 20% of world's freshwater, is "under a state of advanced disturbance". They said that while the target for achieving global conservation goals is set for 2030, but "in eight years the Amazon as we know it might have ceased to exist". Unfortunately, the rapid loss of rainforests in the Northeast has not got the due attention of the policy makers for timely intervention. WWF Director General Marco Lambertini writes in the Executive Summary of the report that "achieving net zero loss for nature is certainly not enough; the world needs to be nature-positive, more natural forest, more fish in the ocean and river systems, more pollinators in our farmlands, more biodiversity worldwide." He harps on the need for the 15th conference of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15t) adopting a "nature-positive mission" for achieving net-positive biodiversity by 2030 along with the net-zero carbon emission by 2050. Disseminating the information and concerns raised in the WWF report as well as the solutions to every section of society is crucial for the world community to realise the gravity of situation and roles which they are expected to play change the situation. The initiatives and actions are mostly remained confined to policy makers, domain experts and environment and biodiversity activists. Awareness of the communities, which is most vital for achieving the goals on ground, often gets overshadowed by optics of events or observation of specific days. The primary message of conveying to the communities, whose actions are going to make a difference about the findings of the various studies, often gets lost and local people fail to play any influential role when a project pushed in their village or areas at the cost of biodiversity loss. Adverse and unprecedented weather condition has already made people in the Northeast to take note of climate change impact. The WWF report needs to be decoded by experts and stakeholders like environment activists for easy understanding of the status of biodiversity around them and why conservation is needed.