Cavalier India Defence Training Academy

This year, roughly a quarter of the vast Pantanal wetland in Brazil , one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has burned in wildfires worsened by climate change. Fires between the cities of Miranda e Corumbá. Image by Chico Ribeiro/Governo MT. A fire has been burning in the world’s largest tropical wetlands, the Pantanal, since mid-July . The Pantanal wetlands, situated in west-central Brazil , sprawls over more than 1,50,000 sq km and also extends into Bolivia and Paraguay. The Pantanal derives its name from the Portuguese word for 'swamp'. The unprecedented fires in the wetland have attracted less attention than blazes in Australia, the Western United States and the Amazon, its northern sibling. But while the Pantanal is not a global household name, tourists in the know flock there because it is home to exceptionally high concentrations of breathtaking wildlife: Jaguars, tapirs, caymans,  endangered giant otters and bright blue hyacinth macaws. Indigenous people wa...

Ahead of finalising new goals to protect biodiversity in next 10 years (2021-30), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity on Tuesday released its fifth Global Biodiversity Outlook report showing how none of the 20 agreed conservation targets of the past 10 years could be fully met by the word - a case which will further complicate the global biodiversity crisis.  Experts believe that such crisis may push the world towards more disasters like Covid-19 pandemic, a zoonotic disease transmitted between animals and humans, massive wildfires and water crisis if the countries don't accept the growing scientific consensus over an ambitious new target of protecting at least 30% of the planet by 2030 – popularly known as 30x30 target – under the UN Convention . Blaming human pressure on resources and unsustainable policies where $500 Billion value of government subsidies potentially cause environmental harm across the globe, the report underlined that the world would now require more...