Circular agriculture in India: Policy perspective

Abstract

Resource depletion and agricultural pollution status in India and worldEconomic growth, population explosion and improvement in quality of life are accompanied with the environment and ecological tradeoffs.As an example, human pressure is compromising biodiversity loss despite continued international efforts, especially the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).According to an estimate, the cost of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation is in a range of 2 -4.5 trillion USD which is nearly 3.3-3.75% of global GDP (TEEB, 2008) [6] .Further estimates revealed that approximately 52 billion USD is being spent on biodiversity annually globally against an estimated annual financing requirement in the range of 150-440 billion USD (HLP, 2012) [8] .In the Indian context, a study estimated that country is spending nearly 2 billion USD annually on conservation of biodiversity, though requirement should be 15-45 billion USD/ year for continued efforts (BIOFIN 2015) [9] Human well-being depends on ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, such as agricultural pollination, water purification, flood protection, and carbon sequestration.These services are expected to be worth between USD 125 and USD 140 trillion (US) annually.According to estimates,