Guests: Prof. Arunabha Majumdar, an eminent scientist of Jadavpur University,(SWRE)

 Dr. Anirban Roy, research officer environment and West Bengal Biodiversity Board.

 Platform: Zoom, Initiative taken by HCI, Kolkata and Dr.Soumitra Das, President HCI.

 This HCI webinar was conducted on the on June 5th,to mark the occasion of World Environment day.

 The main programme was started with the eminent speaker, Prof. Arunabha Majumdar on the topic of Pollution & Biodiversity. He mainly explained about the type of pollutions we are badly experiencing today ,its’ consequence and the measures initiated by the government, where he stated about industrial pollution that predominantly affects the water & air ,thus making unsuitable for human beings, animals, birds even the micro organisms. He also stated with some examples accompanied by slide shows ,where he highlighted some exemplary interesting facts and figures. One of such example was about East Kolkata Wet Land ,covers 125 sq. kilometre where almost 750 million litres of waste water and sewage mixed with industrial pollutants, heavy metals different in organic components, cyanide etc. is treated and is used in various ways like pisciculture (18,000- 20,000 metric tons of fish is produced) and the treated water is later released at kulti, bidadhori and finally it drains out in Sundarbans. The whole plant works on solar energy and a semi-biotic environment is maintained, which means it does no harm to the biodiversity. West Bengal has a total number of 17 rivers which get polluted as per National Records due to industrial waste .As a solution, he stated that a good surveilliance and legislation must be implemented. Some stringent laws are already there like Biodiversity Act 2002, National Green Tribunal Act 2010 (exclusively acts environment protection and conservation of forests and other natural resources)etc. But the most important is to maintain discipline on our part.

 Our second speaker Dr. Anirban Roy, most eloquently described about the topic of “coexistence and dependency between us and surrounding nature in the form of Biodiversity”, where he mainly stated about the variation of the environment from place to place with respect to topography, climate, soil of that place. He said that not only plants and wild animals, birds or insects varies but also the Homo Sapiens (human beings) characteristics in terms of genes. Biodiversity gives a immense services to the all living beings which include economic value, food value, ethical and aesthetic values. “India – The home of Biodiversity”, is one of those 7 most biodiversity countries in the world with varied landscapes, climate, mountains, coastal and laterite regions. He said that there are total 35 hotspots present in the world out of which 4 hotspots are in India (The Himalayas, Western Ghat, Sri Lanka, Indo-Burma and Sundaland). But due to the increase demand of economic and food values the Indian Biodiversity is in great danger. Over hunting/poaching, overgrazing, pollution, rising human pollution etc, are some causes that brings a great threat to extinction of various species, climate change, melting of glaciers & deterioration of water quality, change in crop yield. Therefore, to stop this declination of biodiversity, we should take care and protect it.

 The webinar ended with the vote of thanks given by Mr. Chadan Kr. Bhattacharya,Vice- President of the organisation.