June 25, 2018
Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve features in UNESCO’s list of world’s top 30
The Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) has been selected by UNESCO as one of the top 30 biosphere reserves across the world, on the basis of a competition among submitted videos from such reserves across the world. These videos will, later this year, be ranked by UNESCO and the list released.
Sundarbans happens to be one of only two among the 12 biosphere reserves in the country to figure in this list. Each video is a little more than 60 seconds in duration.
The video on the Sundarbans was made by the State Forest Department.
It highlights the measures taken by the forest management in controlling human-tiger conflict like nylon fencing at forest-village interfaces, quick response teams to manage tiger straying (into villages) incidents and interactions with fringe villages to improve mass awareness about the Sundarbans.
According to the director of SBR, UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme and its World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR) organised the campaign, #ProudToShare to select the 30 videos from among those submitted.
The videos were released during the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5.
These videos will now be made viral through social media. People will share their reactions, and on the basis of those, UNESCO will rank these 30 biosphere reserves. The ranking will be announced at a seminar in New York later this year.
Forest Department officials are hopeful of the video on the Sundarbans achieving a high rank.
Sources: Millennium Post; Video by Forest Dept
