Karnataka Biodiversity Board has now embarked on the creation of an Ecological Biodiversity Registry to create data base of the plants from agriculture, wet, dry land and marine sources. The initiative would help to halt the loss of biodiversity in the state. It would also ensure protection and conservation of biological, ecological and genetic diversity.

The state is known for its rich flora of not just medicinal plants but has a plethora of leafy and flowering plant wealth. A registry is seen as a repository of knowledge and a mechanism to promote, protect and preserve traditional knowledge, which could have wider application with equitable sharing of the benefits. “This ensues the much awaited Access to Biological Resources and Benefit Sharing mandated in the Biodiversity Act,” RK Singh, APCCF and member secretary, Karnataka Biodiversity Board told Pharmabiz.

The Board has created a format to document the plant species in each jurisdiction of the 30 states. The objective is to conserve the biodiversity which is facing significant threats to the state plant species which are driven by habitat degradation, climate change, invasive species, overexploitation and pollution. To this effect, it created a pool of 800 human resources for the documentation of the Ecological Biodiversity Registry workforce.

Currently in Karnataka, the Foundation of Revitalization of Local Health Tradition (FRLHT), a nongovernmental organization has created a medicinal plant registry. “However, our Ecological Biodiversity Registry is a far more compressive data base,” he said.

Another effort by the Board is to constitute a Biodiversity Management Committee. It has created 4,500 committees manned by seven members each. This would provide an awareness about the local plants.

The management and sustainable utilization of bio resources within each jurisdiction of the 30 districts in the state would help to stall illegal and irregular harvesting of bio resources within its jurisdiction. The data could be furnishing to National Biodiversity Authority. It would also enable levying charges as directed by National Biodiversity Authority where a fee would be collected to access and collect bio-resources for commercial purpose within its jurisdiction.

Biodiversity Management Committee would help maintain data about the local vaidyas and practitioners using the biological resources. It would also maintain register giving information about the details of access of biological resources and traditional knowledge granted, details of collection fee imposed and details of benefits derived and mode of their sharing. In addition, the Committee will also be involved in documentation of biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge.

Further, the Karnataka Diversity Board has also given the herbal industry in the state time till the end of the month to compliance to the Access to Biological Resources and Benefit Sharing, said Singh.

India has around 9,500 registered herbal units and a multitude of unregistered cottage-level herbal units depend upon the continuous supply of medicinal plants for manufacture of herbal medical formulations based on Indian Systems of Medicine. Karnataka has 215 Ayurveda units, 10 Homoeopathy and 2 Unani units.