Hyderabad: Deccan Development Society Mobile Biodiversity Festival concludes

Hyderabad: Director of Deccan Development Society (DDS), P V Satheesh said the important reseason to celebrate the two-decadal Mobile Biodiversity Festival (MBF) is marked with receiving "equator for combating climate change with solutions which are a local, environmental, sustainable and permanent solution."

Speaking at the concluding ceremony of the MBF at Machnoor village in Jharasangam mandal on Saturday, he said the recognition once again reminds an urgency to make the solutions sustainable and to combat the climate crisis. During the MBF, the DDS came up with Zaheerabad Agenda. He said it is an agenda of hundreds of farmers and the agenda of this land and its heritage. Over 10,000 people and 158 sarpanches of Zaheerabad region have endorsed it, he added.

Ashish Kothari, environmentalist and founder, Kalpavriksh, Pune, recollecting his visit to the biodiversity festival after twenty years. He appreciated the DDS initiative on Zaheerabad Agenda release. Rukmini Rao, Director, Gramya Resource Centre for Women, highlighted that the women in this region are relatively stronger especially because they are cultivating and eating the traditional crops. She suggested that women should be inherited the land and not men as always.

Michel Pimbert, Director, Center for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, UK, talking about the relevance of Zaheerabad Agenda for the climate crisis, said how it offers an answer for the growing temperatures in the regions of Antarctica and those regions of South Africa.

Hanumantha Rao, the Collector and District Magistrate, Sangareddy District, congratulating DDS on Zaheerabad Agenda release, said that the agenda came from the local people to tackle the present global crisis of climate change.

Dr Sanjay Marthur said the agenda is people's thought but the agenda needs an organisational and institutional system to be realised into reality. A farmer Annapurna said 'there are so many advantages with the biodiverse cropping as some crops give manure, some are useful for the roots, some for food and other for our cattle. We should grow multiple crops to ensure every life is sustained, she stated.