Biodiversity: The Unknown Burning Issue

After twenty years I arrive at my birthplace Kurgha, a village of Phalebash municipality of Gandaki Pradesh. It was unbelievable that the village is vastly changed in the past two decades in my absence. Really, it is very uneasy for me now to adjust my memories of childhood in the native land. The lifestyle of the villagers is not as hard as earlier.

 Schools and colleges, the health center's facilities are available in the village. The village is using home to home water supply, electricity, and connection with motor-able roads. The change was not imaginable for us in our childhood. But the population is getting very low than earlier. Especially the village is about to empty of youths of a laborious age. I had seen hard laboring people in arable fields and cattle shades in my childhood. I saw fertile and arable land remain uncultivated now. Most of the population migrated to urban areas or aboard.

I meet some villagers there and note that the human activities are not only changed but the bio-circle on the land also changed. Agriculture is not an attraction or compulsion for villagers now, the result is that most of the native species of crops lost the existence. I saw a popular spice in paddy named "Gudura" in my childhood has displaced. I noticed that other species of plants and insects also vanished from the scene. Farmers are using imported seeds in their fields, despite native seeds. I feel the lack of genetic improvement of local species is the right way of the issue. The government is continually promoting farmers to use imported seeds in the name of increasing productivity.   

I visit another village in Kaski, there also found some species of paddy is at risk. Begnash a village in Pokhara Metropolitan city, the local paddy species popular named 'Jethobudho' also losing its existence. The water surface is covering with a foreign species Jalkumbhi in tourist hub Fewa Lake of Pokhara. Forest of these areas is also badly affected by the outsider 'Banmara' bushes. The outsider species are disturbing the genetic and traditional inter-dependencies of the native species cycle. Who is still involving in agriculture also not known about the value of biodiversity, which directly contributes to our ecosystem?

 The word Biodiversity indicates the foundation of meaning. It is the composition of two meaningful words 'Bio' means living things and 'Diversity' means the variety. The meaning shows a Biological diversity of specific places or the world that can be found. The habitats of plants, animals, fungi and other micro-organisms are living in an interdependent chain.

A high-level Nepali delegation led by the then Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala also participated in Earth Summit, convened by the UN in Riodejario, Brazil in 1992. It was a milestone summit to guide the way and importance of biodiversity. The summit declared 21 agendas on environment and development, sustainable management of forests. More than 178 countries adopted the declaration. But the implement of commitment is very slow comparatively the weight of the Issue.

Nepal is very rich in biodiversity but the conservation part is very worse. The government is not doing effectively protective and improving works in the ground. The issue directly related to climate change affecting Nepal. It is not meaning Nepal only can solve environmental problems for itself because it is a global issue but Nepal can contribute to the local level especially in preserving and improving biodiversity.