The World Bank will now support the biodiversity conservation efforts in India. It will also help strengthen the capacity of the central pollution control board and the state pollution control boards. A meeting was held between the minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh and the World Bank group president Robert B Zoellick on Thursday in New Delhi.

Other projects that the Bank will support include those related to fuel-efficient transport infrastructure, clean energy hydropower plants, efficient water supply and waste water systems. Programmes that help farmers, fishing communities and people in other vulnerable communities safeguard their livelihoods will also be supported.

The proposed project to strengthen the capacity of the pollution control boards will help build their skills and infrastructure, ensure their financial  sustainability and set up new monitoring and data management mechanisms where as the biodiversity project will seek to demonstrate conservation measures in various ecosystems, catalogue India’s rich biodiversity in hotspots, and support livelihoods of communities living within biodiversity-rich  areas and enable them to benefit from investments in these areas.