In order to sustain a sound tiger population, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has issued orders to declare 600-1,200 square kilometres as inviolate areas for all the tiger reserves in the country.
In all, an area of 32,578.78 sq km has been notified by 16 tiger states as critical tiger habitat under Section 38 (5) of the Wildlife Protection Act.
These states include Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh,
A final decision on the fuel efficiency norms for cars has been laid at the doorstep of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This fructuous issue has seen much wrangling between the automobile industry, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and experts outside the government.
BEE head Ajay Mathur said, “We are close to finalisation. There are a number of parties involved and we want to ensure that what we do fuses the interests of the different stakeholders.”
Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s much-favoured Project Cheetah is in doldrums.
The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) sanctioned `25 lakhs for a feasibility study conducted by chairman of the Wildlife Trust of India Dr M.K. Ranjisinh and wildlife biologist Dr Y.V. Jhala. Three sites in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were selected as proposed homes of the cheetahs. Mr Ramesh even visited South Africa in 2010 and claimed on his return that within a period of three years, cheetahs would be relocated from South Africa to India.
The chief conservator of forests of Thane circle, R.K. Pole, has withdrawn the forest clearance granted to the Navi Mumbai airport.
The clearance was granted on the grounds that the Navi Mumbai airport would be located more than ten km away from the Karnala bird sanctuary as has been laid out in the environmental clearance rules of the MoEF.
The National Commission for Integrated Water Resource Development Plan (IWRDP) had in a policy recommendation categorically stated that the “Himalayan river linking project was not feasible for the period of review up to 2050”.
The IWRDP was set up by the ministry of water resources and provided a detailed brief on the southern rivers also stating that there was no need to rewrite geography of the peninsula rivers as there was “no imperative necessity for such massive water transfer”.
Three more cities are switching over to Bharat Stage (BS)-4 emission norms from Thursday. These cities are Ankaleshwar in Gujarat, Hisar in Haryana and Bharatpur in Rajasthan.
Already 13 cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur, Agra, Lucknow and Solapur are implementing the BS-4 emission norms from 2010 when the national auto fuel policy was announced.
States led by Kerala have expressed apprehension on the ambitious Interlinking of rivers (IRL). Bihar, Punjab, Karnataka and Sikkim point out that the entire issue of inter-basin water transfer needs to be studied in greater detail. Kerala has taken the stand that long distance inter-basin water transfer will not work. The state’s rivers depend on the monsoon and Kerala needs water for its own network of channels, especially during summers.
The Foundation for Biotechnology and Awareness (FBA) has urged the government to lift the moratorium on Bt brinjal and accept the recommendations of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC
Indiscriminate environmental clearances to projects in cement, coal mining, iron and steel and thermal power plant sectors are going to worsen the water crisis in the country.
India has become the testing ground for a whole range of GM crops. These include paddy, wheat, maize, mustard, okra even as testing for the controversial Bt brinjal continues.
Testing is being done by private universities, private crop developers and the National Agricultural Research System all of whom are testing these crops often without the consent of state governments, including Bihar, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh, who have openly expressed their reservations on GM crops.
