Mumbai On Course to Get Its First Biodiversity Management Committee

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has greenlit a proposal to put in place the region’s first Biodiversity Management Committee. This committee will consist of 23 members and will be chaired by a Joint Municipal Commissioner.  

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At the General Body meeting held on December 1, Mayor Kishori Pednekar provided the formal approval to the constitution of the committee while also announcing the names of five environmentalists and experts who will be part of the 23-member committee. 

A Garden Department official said that the BMC was at the risk of facing fines for its failure to comply with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order which was issued on March 18, 2020. In the order, the NGT said that states which don’t comply with the Biodiversity Act will have to pay penalties of Rs 10 lakh every month. 

“The BMC had already initiated the process of constitution of committee in 2017. However, it took a lot of time to finalise the names of experts… Also, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, no general body meeting had been held in the past seven months. This also delayed the process,” a BMC official said. 

Among the duties of the committee will be to come up with a people’s biodiversity register which will possess all information on availability and knowledge of local biological resources as well as their medicinal uses/benefits, and traditional knowledge related to them. 

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Subhash Patnem a member of the committee said, “Mumbai has a lot of biodiversity, which is unnoticed and undocumented. The main aim of the committee is to prepare a record of biodiversity and then take steps towards preservation and conservation. Also, infrastructure works have also affected the environment and the committee can work on compensation towards the damage.”

Some civic officials said that the biodiversity committee should meet at least four times in a year and once every three months.

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