India and China are today the world’s developing economic giants and a group of scientists who have research programmes in one or both countries, feel that both the countries need to cooperate with each other in order to fight with the major environmental issues.
In a commentary published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, the scientists said a vital and a very dominant role would be played by the two fast-developing countries in molding the environmental outcomes for the planet this century. The two countries which are also the most populous in the world require cooperating with each other in order to reduce biodiversity loss, mitigating climate change and reducing deforestation.
Kamaljit S. Bawa, the first author of the paper shared that there is a great pressure on environmental resources, as both countries are experiencing enormous economic growth.
Dr. Bawa, who is founder-president of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a non-governmental organisation headquartered in Bangalore, and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, U. S, explained that stress like this is being felt in regions from which these resources are drawn, including the Himalayas.
One of the greatest challenges that would b efface by the two nations will be water availability and this will require careful cooperation, said Jiangquo Liu, Distinguished Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife at the Michigan State University, U. S., who is also one of the authors of the paper.
The paper suggests that the two countries need to work together much more closely, taking under concentration the magnitude of the environmental issues. The two countries require sharing knowledge with each other and the action taken together will be more efficient in dealing with such issues.
The paper also proposed several steps which could be taken to grow cooperation between the two Asian giants.
