Rio Conventions Pavilion TV, CBD COP11 (12/10/2012) – Dr V B Mathur of the World Life Institute of India discusses India’s pressing challenge of balancing development and biodiversity conservation, as well as explaining the ‘Biodiversity Express’.

Mathur asserts that India is committed to both the needs of developments and the imperatives of biodiversity conservation and that they are hoping to demonstrate this at COP11. He states that community participation is a cornerstone of both of these agendas.

Mathur argues that responsible development is what is needed, giving tourism as an example: he advocates the promotion of tourism but it needs to be within the boundaries of biodiversity protection.

Mathur maintains that all government ministries, not just the the environment ministry but the ministries of transport, agriculture, industry and many others. He thinks that the biodiversity strategy and action plans developed by the CBD could provide a good means of doing this.

Mathur ends by describing a project the World Life Institute is running alongside COP11 to raise awareness of the themes of the negotiations. He explains that they have organised a ‘Biodiversity Express’, a train in which each of the ten compartments showcases India’s rich biodiversity from a different landscape, such as the deserts, mountains, coasts or evergreen forests. He states that the train is currently in Secunderabad and has so far reached 140 00 people: they aim to reach 5 million by the end of the project.