About the book, “Biodiversity Conservation- An Antidote to Climate Change”

Shocks and despair arising from loss of life and property, leaving behind thousands of victims homeless, due to nature caused calamities and human induced disasters, are erased from human mind, until such time, when next disaster strikes. People do not wake up immediately to ‘red alert calls’ of the nature and fail to take instant corrective measures. They take things easy until another disaster strikes again. People should remember, when the nature strikes, it comes down with an oppressive form without warning, when least expected.

These natural calamities are not new to human history. They are there ever since the earth was born. People take miseries striking due to natural disasters in their stride, including those of deaths of their kith and kin. Since the recent past, the recurrences of human induced disasters are on the increase by about 40%; worst of all, the manner in which they are treated by people and the governments is of great concern. Wisdom should prevail on human society and the governments to be sensitive to fragile nature and treat it with respect. Incidentally, the burning issue before us today is the impact of global warming on the biodiversity and the effect of biodiversity on the climate. The climate -meaning rainfall regime and temperature regime- is principally responsible in characterizing the biodiversity and vice versa. Since, both climate and biodiversity are inter-related this study is set to examine how far climate change is responsible for environmental catastrophe and how biodiversity is responsible to remedy upcoming decay. Further, whether they are injurious against each other and/or mutually beneficial are also examined.
Climate change due to global warming refers to “a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer)”. Climate change may be due to natural internal process or external forces, or to persistent anthropogenic changes or in the composition of the atmosphere or on land use pattern. Climate change is not something that will hit us one day in a spectacular manner. It is happening right now, every day, all around us! The Ozone hole over Antarctic reported to have caused by accumulation of Cloro-floro-carbons(CFCs). Ozone losses were a global phenomenon and the stratospheric chemistry above the Arctic was highly perturbing.

There is very little doubt that human induced green house gasses emission has contributed significantly to climate change. Most significant changes in the earth’s temperature have been noticed since the advent of the industrial era in the late 1800s. Over the past 100 years, the earth’s surface has warmed up by approximately 0.6OC. Human activities such as the large-scale burning of fossil fuels to operate power plants and automobiles are releasing greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented volume. Humans, on the other hand, are currently releasing 70 million tonnes of CO2 per day into the atmosphere.