The lifting of the interim ban on tourism in tiger reserves has brought a cheer to the tiger tourism industry though the Supreme Court has unequivocally placed the onus of responsibility of protection of the tiger reserves on the state governments.

Amit Sankala, director of Tiger Resorts, believes the Supreme Court has given a six month lead period for the creation of Tiger Protection Force (TPF) across all the 17 states in which tiger reserves are located.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority has admitted that tiger deaths are on the rise: 69 of them having been killed or died naturally in the past nine months.

The Cabinet has given the green signal of the signing of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) arising from the fair and equitable utilisation of genetic resources and traditional knowledge.

The protocol will also contribute to the twin objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity relating to the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources especially since India accounts for 7-8 per cent of the recorded species of the world.

The ministry of environment and forests on Wednesday granted forest clearance to the Mahan coal block spread over 1,082 hectares of prime forest in the Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh.

This coal block was denied clearance four times by the Forest Advisory Committee, who had cited the presence of a large tribal population dependent on these forests for their livelihood.

The 'tiger of the Ganga' is the nomenclature for the Ganga river dolphin which enjoys the same status in the river ecosystem as that of a tiger in a forest.

Like the tiger, the dolphin is close to extinction with its numbers having plunged from 6,000 in 1982 to less than 1,800 in 2012. With India losing nearly 160 animals a year, WWF India has launched a three-day awareness campaign, 'My Ganga, My Dolphin', in which they will conduct a survey of the number of dolphins present across a 2,800-km stretch of the Ganga river, along with the Yamuna, Son, Ken, Betwa, Ghagra and Geruwal rivers.

Global food experts have come out unanimously against GM crops declaring that there is no evidence to show that GM crops help enhance a nation’s security.

Prof. Jack Heinemann from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Christchurch, New Zealand, and a lead author of the prestigious International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge (IAASTD) report pointed out that GM crops were presently confined to five countries, including the US, which was using 30 per cent of agricultural land for these crops. “The question to be asked is whether GM is an appropriate technology to achieve food sovereignty.

The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has been accused of allocating over 1.86 lakh hectares of forest land for mining without the consent of gram sabhas as has been made mandatory under the Forest Rights Act.

In all, 1,82,389 hectares of forest land was diverted by the environment ministry between January 2008 and August 2011. The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) headed by T. Chatterjee, secretary of MoEF, has recommended diversion of four additional projects located in prime forest land in 2012. This includes 151,762 hectares for the Lara Super Thermal Power Plant in the Raigarh district of Chattisgarh and 766,393 hectares of forest land for the Talaipall Coal Mining Project in the Raigarh and Dharmajaigarh forest divisions of Chattisgarh.

In a strong bid to promote energy conservation in the residential sector, German KfW Development Bank is providing a loan of euro 50 million to National Housing Bank (NHB) for refinancing housing loans to buy energy efficient housing units.

KfW has pushed a similar scheme in Germany, where it provided loans to the tune of euro 40 billion for 1.8 billion “green” housing units. This helped substantively bring energy consumption down in the residential sector in Germany. India currently has 246.7 million households but the focus of the NHB is to target households that want to purchase flats in `50-70 lakhs bracket.

The Montreal Protocol (MP) is the only climate change treaty that has been ratified by every country in the globe and is testament to the fact that nations can achieve complete unanimity in fighting climate change.

In a function held to celebrate 25 years of MP organised by the ministry of environment and forests, New York-based Dr Suely Carvalho, chief of the Montreal Protocol, pointed out that parties to the protocol have phased out 98 per cent of ozone-depleting chemicals.

RTI activist Ajay Dubey of Madhya Pradesh, who shot into prominence with his Supreme Court petition asking for better monitoring of tiger reserves, feels he was justified in having sought redressal from the highest court.

“Madhya Pradesh had 700 tigers in 2000 but their numbers are down to 257,” said Mr Dubey who runs an environmental protection group, Prayatna. “Thirty-five tigers were lost in Panna alone from 2000. Undoubtedly, they died at the hands of poachers but my question is why was the ministry of environment so lax in implementing the Wildlife Protection Act 1972?” he asked.