Indira Gandhi rashtriya manav sangrahalaya organize a museums popular lecture on the occasion of World Environment Day, professor of Anthropology Indian Institute of Forest Management Prof Amitabh Pande delivered lecture on ‘Environmental Conservation: Nature-Based Solutions Vis-Ã -vis learning from Museums’.
He said that This year world environment day 2022 is being hosted by Sweden with the campaign slogan “only one Earth” focusing on “living sustainably in Harmony with Nature.”
Talking about nature-based solutions and museums he highlighted the theoretical debate on the environmental crisis and the individualization approach and what solution society can learn in general and urban population in particular. Further, he discussed the causes of environmental crises like climate change, water, rivers and pollution the world is facing.
Indigenous communities still continuing with nature based lifestyle have many learning to offer for others. Even PM Shri Narendra Modi ji in his CoP 26 address emphasized on nature based lifestyle to save the world from climate change crisis.
The term nature-based solution is being practised globally for decades, if not centuries, and is seen as a solution which can help in restoring the world environment from the present disturbed condition. The nature-based solution is the ecosystem approach to nature conservation and management. Prof Amitabh highlighted how indigenous and rural communities use an ecosystem approach to living to conserve nature through cultural, spiritual and moral ecological principles.
Linking the importance of NBS to museums, he talked about the new museum movement which acknowledges the nature-based solution of eco-communities. The increasing role of anthropological and eco-museums in the preservation and presentation of cultural and natural heritage, as well as their actual potential in sustainable development. Eco-museum encourages participation in the approach to protection and promotion of not only cultural but natural heritage as well. On the world environment day, he emphasised the importance of IGRMS and its uniqueness as a living museum which has several repositories of Nature-based solutions which can be studied by students, research and policy makers and used in their works.