The Andhra Pradesh State Biodiversity Board (APSBB) has planned extensive OECMs (Other Effective Area - based Conservation Measures) for various species of flora and fauna outside the reserve forests, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. 

“A Protected Area is explicitly dedicated to nature conservation whereas an OECM is governed and managed for other primary goals such as community use, industrial greenbelts or water management but it de facto delivers effective, long-term, in situ biodiversity conservation as a byproduct,” APSBB Chairman Neelayapalem Vijay Kumar told The Hindu. 

He observed that OECMs are vital tools for achieving the global “30x30” target formalised under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to protect at least 30% of the earth’s land and oceans by the year 2030 in order to halt biodiversity loss and help stabilise the climate. 

Mr. Kumar noted that Andhra Pradesh has a diverse ecological landscape spanning the Eastern Ghats, the Krishna and Godavari river basins, huge coastal wetlands and traditional sacred groves. Keeping in view the likelihood of declaration of formal Protected Areas triggering socio-economic conflicts, the APSBB chose OECMs as a flexible and inclusive alternative. 

The OECMs planned include harnessing industrial greenbelts, development of micro-forests in cities such as Vijayawada, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Kurnool and Rajahmundry, and protecting marine breeding grounds in traditional fishing zones and estuarine areas in partnership with agencies such as the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute. 

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Mr. Vijay Kumar said, “The OECMs help in bridging fragmented ecosystems, especially the wildlife corridors in the Eastern Ghats through which multiple highways pass and where agriculture is widely prevalent, and in boosting conservation footprint by facilitating rapid scaling up of the legally recognised conservation measures thereby meeting national targets without displacing villages and acquiring lands.”

Besides, the OECMs seamlessly align with Access and Benefit Sharing mechanisms, wherein the local communities protecting bio-resources can legally trade or utilise them sustainably, turning conservation into an economic incentive. 

To do better urban planning from the environmental perspective, APSBB has already initiated the preparation of City Biodiversity Indices for Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Kadapa on the lines of the globally acclaimed Singapore Index. The baseline indexing has been completed in those cities and steps were taken to scale this framework across additional urban and semi-urban clusters. The baseline assessments of cities provide the exact geographic and environmental blueprints needed to discover and scale up localised OECMs. 

APSBB’s focus is on conservation efforts in the riverine ecosystem of Vijayawada, marine-coastal biodiversity of Visakhapatnam that features beaches, estuaries, mangroves and industrial buffer zones, corporate industrial sanctuaries (greenbelts) in Kakinada and Visakhapatnam and Tirupati’s foothill ecosystems and sacred landscapes.