The district authorities have proposed three more sites near Kavali for the proposed airport of Nellore. The new sites were proposed after an expert committee raised some objections over two sites recommended before because of the presence of water bodies. Sources said officials have identified 2,360 acres in north Rajupalem (12 km from Nellore), 1,627 acres in Racharlapadu (23 km from Nellore) and 1,785 acres near Damavaram (30 km from Nellore) in Dagadarthi mandal. Of the three, Damavaram site said to be suitable for the airport since the government owns large tracts of land.

Villagers from the Bhiwandi taluka staged a

The Singareni Collieries Company Limited proposed to mechanise the new underground mines coming up soon while introducing machines in the existing ones.

If you thought utilising agricultural land - khazans - for fish farming is bad. Hold your breath... It may not be long before it is officially allowed. In order to facilitate the use of khazan land for pisciculture purpose, the Fisheries Department has recommended amendment to the Land Revenue Act. The State has about 18000 hectares of Khazan land but vast portion has been left unutilized, or fallow. The Department of Fisheries believes it can be utilised for pisciculture.

In a breather for nearly five lakh families residing in over 100 acres of

Even as the Kancheepuram district administration expects to complete land acquisition in a month to allow the airport expansion project to start in June, for the residents in the affected areas, many questions remain unanswered.

Within a couple of years of the global rush to promote biofuels new questions are being asked about the claimed benefits of these fuels and serious negative impacts are coming to light. It is in this regard that the focus of the biofuel policy in India has been towards utilising an "oil bearing' plant, jatropha carcus, for oil extraction, processing and eventual blending with diesel. The advantage of this plant lies in the fact that it can be grown on cultivable wasteland and requires very little fertiliser and other inputs as normally required in agriculture. (Editorial) May 3-9, 2008

Payments for environmental services (PES) have attracted increasing interest as a mechanism to translate external, non-market values of the environment into real financial incentives for local actors to provide environmental services (ES).

This paper presents a brief overview of pastoral systems, analyses the rationale behind mobility as a strategy to cope with scarce and variable resource endowment, and finally addresses the rights concerning the access to and the control of resources in the context of climate change.

If India as a country stands accused of failure to protect the national animal, the state of Uttar Pradesh is now on the verge of being indicted in the same manner for threatening the very existence of the state bird, the Sarus Crane, in the districts of Etawah and Mainpuri where it has been apparently flourishing. The U.P. Govt formed a Sarus Protection Society and earmarked Rs. 10 crores for the purpose, but it is lying in cold storage. (May 2008)

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