📍Seed Industry Suddenly Talking of Preserving Agrobiodiversity

There is a sweet irony in the recent statement made by the FSII (Federation of Seed Industry of India) calling for greater national focus on preserving and strengthening India’s agrobiodiversity! FSII describes “seed diversity and resilient crop genetics as critical for ensuring long-term food security and farmer resilience”. Industries and corporations have so far been intent on the exploitation of agrobiodiversity, not its conservation. 

So my first reaction to the FSII statement was…did I hear that right? The second was Good, “Der aye, Durust aye”. For non-Hindi speakers, that’s ‘Better Late than Never’.

The fact is that civil society groups like Gene Campaign, MSSRF (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation) and others have been crying themselves hoarse for years that genetic diversity is one of our greatest riches and must be brought into the mainstream of seed production. Governments have more or less disregarded this appeal. They have chosen instead to support the seed industry and their own research establishment to invest in tech driven approaches like genetic engineering and gene editing. The incongruity here is that all of this research is based on genes and technologies patented by outsiders, mostly by

corporations. Nothing is Indian.

Gene Campaign which has been engaged in the collection, conservation and characterisation of traditional crop varieties, has been advocating for decades that agricultural biodiversity is the “green gold”; of India. And that genetic diversity and indigenous knowledge are the most effective, time-tested resources for securing food, adapting to climate change, and ensuring sustainable livelihoods for farmers. Gene Campaign’s collection of several hundred traditional rice varieties from eastern India, chiefly Jharkhand, was transferred to the National Gene Bank in Delhi when Dr Ayyappan was the Director General of ICAR. In Uttarakhand, Gene Campaign has made several collections of traditional varieties of mountain crops like Millets, Maize, Wheat, Soybean, Rice, Rajma etc. These have been shared with farmers from villages where Gene Campaign works because farmers want to have different varieties for planting instead of just the one or two varieties available in the village.

This way, more genetic diversity has gone to the fields. Gene Campaign also organized a Beej Mela or Seed Fair in village Reetha in Uttarakhand which was attended by farmers from several villages of the region. Gene Campaign’s collection of seeds was presented at the mela and farmers had also brought seeds from their own villages. There was a vibrant exchange between farmers of seeds and knowledge during the day long mela. On this occasion farmers were happy to take home seeds of traditional varieties that had been lost from their villages. Genetic diversity went places that day too.

The News: https://www.ptinews.com/press-release/seed-industry-calls-for-strengthening-indias-agrobiodiversity-amid-global-supply-shocks/3695322

 📍Animals have no seat at the table so we must speak for them.

This news in Hindustan Hindi underscores the point that climate change is not only affecting us humans but animals too. We can switch on the AC when it gets too hot, we migrate to cooler hill stations in summer, we build climate-controlled homes. But what do these poor animals do? They don’t switch on ACs, they move like us, to cooler climes

 

The newspaper reports something deeply troubling. The rare Himalayan Bejal, (honey badger) a small carnivorous mammal that normally lives between 1500 and 2000 meters, has been spotted for the first time at 3500 meters. Tigers have been camera-trapped at 3000 meters in the Sunderdhunga Glacier Valley in Bageshwar — a place where summer temperatures barely cross 12 degrees. Elephants have been seen climbing into the mountains around Ramnagar. These are not random wanderings. These are desperate survival responses to a warming world.

This pattern is not unique to the Himalayas It is unfolding across the planet.

⇢ The American Pika is vanishing from its lower-altitude habitats entirely in the American Rockies due to rising temperatures.

⇢  Polar bears are facing a similar fate as their sea ice habitat melts earlier and forms later every year.

⇢  In the European Alps, plant species are moving upslope at a rate of about 30 meters per decade, and animals are following.

⇢  Mountain gorillas in the Virunga range are being pushed to higher altitudes as temperatures rise in the forests below.

⇢  The mountain pygmy possum in Australia is facing habitat collapse as snowfall in the Australian Alps becomes increasingly unreliable.

⇢  Coral reef fish in the Indo-Pacific are moving poleward, tracking cooler waters, while the coral itself is bleaching and dying in place.

What we are witnessing that every species is reacting to a crisis it did not create. We are responsible for this warming; the consequences are faced by them.

There is another dimension to this that I have written about before and return to here. When animals move, they abandon the ecosystems they were part of. The predator-prey relationships, the pollination networks, the seed dispersal systems — all of these are disrupted. An elephant in the mountains is not just an elephant in the wrong place. It is a missing piece in the lowland forest it has vacated.

We owe it to these creatures, and to ourselves, to treat climate change not as an economic or political negotiation, but as a moral obligation. The animals have no seat at the table. We must speak for them.

 📌 Forests taken away from the guardianship of forest dwellers.

In India as in other parts of the developing world, many communities call the forests their home and have lived there over generations. This community of forest dwellers have traditionally derived their livelihoods from the forest which has included forest produce and agriculture.

Colonial policies which used the forest as a timber resource have historically been antagonistic to forest dwellers. Later national policies declaring certain parts of the forest as protected areas, national parks and conservation zones put further pressure on forest dwelling communities forcing displacement and marginalization.

To undo these gross violations of the rights of forest communities, the Government of India enacted the Forest Rights Act in 2006. This law recognized the rights of forest communities to live on and cultivate ancestral forest land. It also gave them legal rights to collect and use Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) and also sell these collections. In recognition of their role in conserving the forest, The Forest Rights Act (FRA) granted forest dwellers the right to protect and manage community forest resources. In this way, the FRA made tribal communities the legal custodians of India’s most ecologically significant landscapes. But this did not last long.

In 2023, the government brought an amendment to the largely positive Forest Conservation Act 1980 which militates directly against the earlier rights granted to forest dwellers under the FRA 2006. The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 has removed the mandatory clause that the Gram Sabha had to give its consent before any forest land could be diverted. This was the one institutional mechanism through which forest communities could exercise binding authority over their forests. By the treacherous amendment of 2023 amendment, this right was taken away, opening the forest to rampant exploitation.

https://theindiantribal.com/2026/05/15/weakening-tribal-forest-rights-could-undermine-indias-climate-commitments-and-carbon-sink-targets/