Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC)

• It was set up by the Government as the apex level forum in December 2010.
• It is a non-statutory body.
• It was established with a view to strengthening and institutionalizing the mechanism for maintaining financial stability, enhancing inter-regulatory coordination and promoting financial sector development.
• The Chairman of the Council is the Finance Minister and its members include the heads of financial sector Regulators (RBI, SEBI, PFRDA, IRDA & FMC) Finance Secretary and/or Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, and Chief Economic Adviser.
• The Council can invite experts to its meeting if required.

Charru mussel

• It is an invasive mussel native to the South and Central American coasts.
• Externally, the Charru mussel resembles the green and brown mussels (kallummekka in Malayalam), but is much smaller in size.
• Its colour varies from black to brown, purple or dark green.
• It is spreading quickly in the backwaters of Kerala, elbowing out other mussel and clam species and threatening the livelihoods of fishermen engaged in molluscan fisheries.
• Though this smaller mussel is edible, the overall economic loss and impact on biodiversity is much bigger.
• The rapid spread of the Charru mussel (Mytella strigata) may have been triggered by Cyclone Ockhi which struck the region in 2017.
• In all probability, the mussel reached the Indian shores attached to ship hulls or as larval forms in ballast water discharges.
• Surveys show the presence of the Charru mussel in the Kadinamkulam, Paravur, Edava-Nadayara, Ashtamudi, Kayamkulam, Vembanad, Chettuva and Ponnani estuaries/backwaters.

Ashtamudi Lake

• Ashtamudi Lake, a Ramsar site in Kollam district, remains the worst-hit.
• The short-necked clam fisheries in the lake had obtained an eco label from the Marine Stewardship Council and about 3,000 people are dependent on fisheries there.
• With a population as high as 11,384 per sq metre here, it has replaced the Asian green mussel (Perna viridis) and the edible oyster Magallana bilineata (known locally as muringa).

• World Dugong Day was celebrated recently on May 28, 2020.

Dugongs

• Dugongs are an endangered marine species and an important part of the marine ecosystem and their depletion will have effects all the way up the food chain.
• Dugongs are mammals, which means they give birth to live young and then produce milk and nurse them.
• Once the female is pregnant, she will carry the unborn baby, called a foetus for 12-14 months before giving birth.
• Female dugongs give birth underwater to a single calf at three to seven-year intervals.
• Dugongs graze on seagrass, especially young shoots and roots in shallow coastal waters.
• They can consume up to 40 kilograms of seagrass in a day.
• They are protected in India under Schedule I of the Wild (Life) Protection Act, 1972.
• There were just 250 dugongs in the Gulf of Mannar in Tamil Nadu, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat according to the 2013 survey report of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI).
• Hundreds of dugongs inhabited waters off the Odisha, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh coasts two centuries back, but they are extinct in these areas now.
• Seagrass in Odisha’s Chilika lake is a proper habitat for dugongs. However, there is not extant population in Chilika.
• Human activities such as the destruction and modification of habitat, pollution, rampant illegal fishing activities, vessel strikes, unsustainable hunting or poaching and unplanned tourism are the main threats to dugongs.
• The loss of seagrass beds due to ocean floor trawling was the most important factor behind dwindling dugong populations in many parts of the world.

• They normally live and breed in semi-arid or desert regions.
• For laying eggs, they require bare ground, which is rarely found in areas with dense vegetation.
• So, they can breed in Rajasthan but not in the Indo-Gangetic plains or Godavari and Cauvery delta.
• But green vegetation is required for hopper development.
• Hopper is the stage between the nymph that is hatched from the eggs, and the winged adult moth.
• Such cover isn’t widespread enough in the deserts to allow growth of large populations of locusts.
• As individuals, or in small isolated groups, locusts are not very dangerous.
• But when they grow into large populations their behaviour changes, they transform from ‘solitary phase’ into ‘gregarious phase’, and start forming ‘swarms’.
• A single swarm can contain 40 to 80 million adults in one square km, and these can travel up to 150 km a day.
• Large-scale breeding happens only when conditions turn very favourable in their natural habitat, desert or semi-arid regions.
• Good rains can sometimes generate just enough green vegetation that is conducive to egg-laying as well as hopper development.
• This is what seems to have happened this year.
• These locusts usually breed in the dry areas around Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea along the eastern coast of Africa, a region known as the Horn of Africa.
• Other breeding grounds are the adjoining Asian regions in Yemen, Oman, southern Iran, and in Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
• Many of these areas received unusually good rains in March and April, and that resulted in large-scale breeding and hopper development.
• These locusts started arriving in Rajasthan around the first fortnight of April, much ahead of the normal July-October normal.
• The Locust Warning Organisation, a unit under the Agriculture Ministry, had spotted these and warned of their presence at Jaisalmer and Suratgarh in Rajasthan, and Fazilka in Punjab near the India-Pakistan border.
• Subsequently, there has been arrival of several swarms from the breeding areas.

• In order to keep the menace of locust at bay Locust Warning Organization (LWO) has been established.
• Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), Directorate of Plant Protection Quarantine and Storage, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare is responsible for monitoring, survey and control of Desert Locust in Scheduled Desert Areas mainly in the States of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
• The Department has established 11 Nos. of Locust Control Offices (LCOs) established under LWO in Scheduled Desert Area of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
• The LWO monitors, forewarns and controls locust in Scheduled Desert Area, conduct research on locust and grasshoppers, keep liaison and coordination with National and International Organizations and undertakes HRD through training and demonstration.