Indira Gandhi put in place framework for protecting India's bio-diversity: Sonia Gandhi

Congress President Sonia Gandhi said on Monday that the legal and institutional framework India has for protecting its bio-diversity had been put in place during former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's tenure as Prime Minister and it bears her personal imprimatur.

Speaking at the event held virtually in which Sir David Attenborough was conferred the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for 2019, Sonia Gandhi said that the late Prime Minister became an unwavering champion of environmental protection long before that cause had become popular both in India and abroad.

Lauding the role of David Attenborough, she said for well over half-a-century, he has been "one of nature's most staunch conscience keepers".

"Sir David is already well known to us all through his prodigious creativity in educating humankind with brilliant films and books about the natural world. And he has, of late, been the most sensible voice warning us that we, more than anything else, are responsible for the accelerating threat to the environment on our planet," she said.

Sonia Gandhi said Indira Gandhi was born in a political family but saw herself as a child of nature, developing a special affinity for mountains, forests, birds and animals from an early age.

"Along with the Quaker associate of Mahatma Gandhi Horace Alexander, she was one of the founder-members of Delhi Bird Watching Society as long ago as 1950. Subsequently, as Prime Minister she became an unwavering champion of environmental protection long before that cause had become popular both in India and abroad," she said.

The Congress chief said Indira Gandhi's momentous speech at the first-ever UN Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm in June 1972, has become a milestone in the global environmental discourse.

"It was in this speech that she first elaborated on the inter-connectedness of peace, disarmament and development with environmental conservation. Her view was forthright: without meaningful disarmament you cannot have enduring peace, and without protecting the environment, development will simply not be sustainable. In that speech, she was one of the first world leaders to draw attention to changing weather patterns, something now accepted as a hard reality," Sonia Gandhi said.

She said Indira Gandhi was acutely conscious of the fact that she was Prime Minister of a developing country, a country that needed to create jobs and tackle poverty.

"India needed to accelerate the pace of investment and to expand its economic infrastructure. But at the same time, she was very sensitive to the imperative of maintaining what she would often call 'ecological balance'. Her political innings were a search for that balance and a journey of educating her colleagues and the people to preserve that balance. Her Stockholm address ended with an invocation from the Atharva Veda: What of Thee I dig out, let that quickly grow over, Let me not hit thy vitals or thy heart.

"It is not a surprise, therefore, to find that the legal and institutional framework India now has for protecting its wonderful bio-diversity had been put in place during her tenure as Prime Minister. It bears her personal imprimatur," she said.

Sonia Gandhi said David Attenborough has legions of admirers across the world and age has not dimmed his zeal, "neither has humanity's willful disregard for what he says".

"He has kept going relentlessly, educating, enlightening and sensitizing millions of people. I well remember how excitedly Indira Gandhi would watch his documentaries with us and encourage her grandchildren to do so. I am not sure whether Sir David had ever met her," she said.

The Congress leader said when environmental protection has become all the more imperative, when climate change and continued loss of biodiversity is threatening livelihoods and public health, indeed life on earth, there could not have been a more appropriate choice for an award in her name than David Attenborough. 

-ANI

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