Linking Biodiversity Conservation and Livelihoods in India

In a country like India, millions of people rely on products from natural ecosystems to sustain their . Natural ecosystems provide clean water from watersheds, retention of soil and soil fertility, sequestration of carbon, as well as pollinators and predators of pests. For these reasons, rapid, often irreversible, loss of species and ecosystems is of more than just academic concern. Indeed, our understanding of biodiversity in natural ecosystems remains so woefully inadequate that we are unable to fully comprehend the consequences of its loss. With impending climate change and increasing spread of invasive species, the biodiversity crisis is likely to worse, with far-reaching effects on human societies.