The Sunderbans, spreading across West Bengal and Bangladesh, is fast emerging as the climate change flashpoint of the globe. Despite the warning signals of increased frequency of cyclones and tidal floods, the West Bengal government has drawn up a massive project to expand the Haldia port which will directly impact the western Sunderbans region.

Environmentalists already complain against increasing oil spillage from vessels in and around the Mongia Port that are adversely affecting its biodiversity.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has asked the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to review its clearance granted to Posco.

This is being seen as a further setback to the South Korean giant, especially since NGT has suspended the “conditional” clearance and insisted Posco to seek a fresh clearance. The NGT noted that although the MoU between the Orissa government and Posco had been signed for production of 12 million tones of steel per annum (MTPA),

Farmers in Haryana have stepped up their campaign against the setting up of the Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plant in the Fatehabad district of the state.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) has earmarked over 628 hectares of land to set up a 2,800-MW power plant which will use pressurised heavy water reactors at a cost of `13,000 crores. The villages earmarked for site selection include Gorakhpur, Kumaharia and Kajalhedi.

Despite having unleashed more than 780 Bt cotton hybrids in India during the last decade, yields have turned stagnant and farmer suicides in the cotton belt are multiplying.

In fact, although Bt cotton now covers more than 90 per cent of the total cotton growing area in the country, yields in the last five years have gone up marginally from 470 kg per ha to 481 kg per ha though input costs have increased several fold, warned member NGOs of the Coalition for GM-Free India.

The government expressed willingness to halt all power projects coming up in the Ganga’s Alaknanda and Bhagirathi river basi-ns as part of its concessions to 80-year-old Prof. G.D. Agarwal (Swami Gyansw-aroop Anand) to persuade him to break his prolonged fast at the AIIMS here on Friday.

These include the 330MW Srinagar hydroelectric po-wer project, Singoli-Bhat-wari and Phata-Byung on the Mandakini, Khotibhal IA on the Bhagirathi, Vish-nugad-Pipalkoti and Alakn-anda-Badrinath on the Ala-knanda and Devsari on the Pindar.

The Stockholm Internati-onal Water Institute (SIWI) has warned against the increasing leasing and buying of millions of hectares of farmlands in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America for food and fuel production.

This land is being leased to private investors and sovereign wealth funds with no explicit legal agreement on how water will be used on these farmlands.
The World Bank has estimated that over 56 million hectares of land in Africa was leased in 2009 alone but other researches indicate that over 200 million hectares of land, which works out to roughly the size of western Europe, has already been leased out.

The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) is set to give teeth to the Environment Protection Act by increasing penalties against those breaking environmental laws.

Sounding a despairing note, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan told this reporter, “The present `1 lakh penalty for environmental violations is ridiculous. The penalty should be both imprisonment as well as financial penalty.

Even as Rajasthan’s minister of environment, the flamboyant Bina Kak has expressed apprehension at the rising cases of human-animal conflict, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan is determined to play down such incidents.

Ms Kak cites the example of four people being killed in Rajathan within a span of three weeks due to man-animal conflict with two of the victims having been mauled to death in Ranthambore National Park.

Environmentalists have welcomed the government’s tax hike on big cars and SUVs, claiming this will help reduce toxic emissions. But they warn that the government has taken no steps to curb the use of subsidised diesel in private diesel cars.

Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment, warned that urgent steps must be taken to discourage “diesel consumption as also to reduce toxic emissions”, especially since dieselisation is rapidly growing in the small and medium segments which have been left untouched.

The importance of sustainable development and climate change have been put into sharp focus in the latest Economic Survey 2011-12.

The Economic Survey lays special emphasis on the development of a green economy. An important step in this direction is being taken by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation which is to put a green national accounting system which will list environmental costs of development and reflect the depletion of natural resources in generating national income.

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