Over 150 countries signed a global Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Currently 155 countries including Pakistan are signatories of the Convention, which has become one of the major environmental priorities. The objectives of the CBD are:
- The conservation of biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystem level;
- The sustainable use of its components;
- The fair and equitable sharing if the benefits are derived from the use of genetic resources, notably on the basis of regulating access to genetic resources and of transfer of appropriate technologies.
The CBD defines biological diversity or 'biodiversity' as:
the variability among living organisms from all sources including inter alia , terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems (CBD 1992)
This primarily means that biodiversity is crucial to the well being of the country. It provides clean water, pure air, soil formation and protection, pest control and the provision of food, fuel, fibre and drugs.
Glossary of Environmental terms
Ecology: the study of the structure and function of ecosystems, dealing mainly with the interaction of organisms with one another and with their non-living setting.
Ecosystems: a self regulating community of plants and animals interacting with one another and with their non-living environment.
Community: is made up of all the interacting populations of a number of species in a given area.
Population: a group of interacting individuals of the same kind or species.
Species: a population of organisms, which are able to interbreed freely under natural conditions.
Is a class of plants and animal, whose members have the same charactersticks and are able to breed with each other
Palaearctic : belonging to the Central Asian Region.
Indomalayan : belonging to the South Asian region (oriental).
Ethiopian: belonging to African region.
Endemic: The sitituation in which specie or other taxonomic group is restricted to a particular geographic region, due to factor such as isolation or response to soil or climatic conditions. |
