India to set up eight new ecological observatories

Paris: India will set up eight new ecological observatories, as compared to just one at present, including in the Himalayas and Western Ghats, to map the long-term impacts of climate change, environment minister Prakash Javadekar has said.

“We will be putting up 8 new observatories in eight different biomes. We have fortunately tremendous diversity in India. We have 17 per cent of world’s population, 17 per cent of cattle population, but we have only 2.5 per cent of world’s landmass, but still we have eight per cent of biodiversity in India,” Mr Javadekar said while launching the Long Term Ecological Observatories (LETO) Programme.

“Climate change impacts everything. It does not only impact air, water or weather, it does impact biodiversity as well. To really judge, the long-term ecological impacts, we need long-term ecological observatories. India beli-eves in science. We will be putting them up in Him-alayas, Western Ghats, central India to Sund-erbans and from Jammu and Kashmir to Rajasthan and Gujarat. We have 10 coastal states, 10 Himalayan states, 10 forest dominant states, 1,300 islands. This new initiative which is science-based is very important,” he said. He also launched a booklet on climate-friendly lifestyle practices in India.