The International Conference on Bio-diversity has begun in Hyderabad today with India giving a call for the need to strike the right balance while addressing environmental issues and poverty alleviation.

In her Presidential address at the plenary session of the 11th meeting of Conference of Parties (COP-11) to the Convention on Bio-diversity, the Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said that Bio-diversity issues should be addressed while implementing the poverty alleviation programmes, especially, in developing countries.

The Minister called for concerted efforts among all the stakeholders in implementing the strategic plan for the resilience of the ecosystems and achieving Bio-diversity targets. She exuded the hope that India will ratify the Nagoya Protocol on Bio-diversity soon and the process is underway in full swing.

Stating that the expenditure on Bio-diversity should be viewed as an investment, Ms Natarajan has underlined the need for chalking out financial framework to mobilizing financial resources and also for mainstreaming Bio-diversity into the economies of the countries.

She called upon the member-countries to prepare a roadmap during the negotiations that will continue for next 12 days to speed up the implementation of the strategic plan and efforts to achieve the Bio-diversity targets.

The Minister assured full cooperation for the member-countries to deliberate on key issues like socio-economic concerns and the risk assessment issues relating to genetically modified living organisms.

She also informed that India has been one of the few countries that have initiated changes in the existing laws in support to the implementation of the strategic plan on bio-diversity.

Earlier, Ms Natarajan was elected as President of the Conference of Parties and took over the chair from the Japanese representative.

Executive Secretary of the Convention, Dr Brualio F. de Souza Dias has asked the member-countries to speed up the processes to enable the implementation of the strategic plan on Bio-diversity and achieve Bio-diversity targets. He asked the countries to set targets for 2015 on the issues where significant progress has already been made.

He suggested that the countries must chalk out an action plan to mobilize the financial resources for implantation of the strategic plan. He stressed the need to bring Nagoya protocol on access and benefit sharing of genetic resources into implementation at least by 2014.