The Centre for Environment and Development (CEAD) said on Sunday that riverine forests were disappearing rapidly because of reduced flow of water, unchecked practice of illegally cutting down trees and encroachment upon forest lands. The CEAD office-bearers said in a statement that the entire world was advocating increase in forest cover to face the growing threat of climatic change but unfortunately in Pakistan, forests did not receive much attention. They said that forests were significant for the survival of humanity. In Sindh, forests covered only 2.5 per cent of the total land area and were entirely dependent on monsoon floods in riverine tract and canal water in mainland area, they said. According to recent reports, trees were disappearing due to shortage of irrigation water, arid climatic condition and illegal clearing of forest land, they said. The impact of deforestation included soil depletion, loss of soil fertility, reduction in recharge of aquifer, enhanced sedimentation, lowering of water table, loss of biodiversity and loss of ecosystem, they said. They said that the forests in the areas below Kotri Barrage were the worst affected where many had been cleared of any vegetation and turned virtually unproductive. They said that some time ago, many forests in Kachho area were cut down on the pretext of security fears while the root cause of law and order problem remained unaddressed even this day. They urged people of the area as well as civil society organisations to help protect forests and hoped that the Sindh Forest Department would ensure that all the encroachments were removed, existing forest area was protected and efforts were made to bring further area under forests. Trees helped control soil erosion, check run-off, reduce desiccation of crops, add favourable nutrients to soil, improve physical and chemical properties of soil and enhance rate of biological processes, the CEAD officials said.

The Delhi Development Authority has decided to withdraw the draft Yamuna River Zonal Plan dealing with 90 square kilometres of active flood plain of the river here.

The multi-crore Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh is currently embroiled in legal issues. But now, the project is being contested on technical issues as well. A study carried out by the

Aquatic macroinvertebrate diversity in the Bhagirathi river was monitored for the period of twelve months (September 2004 to August 2005) for assessing the impact of Asia's highest dam, Tehri Dam. Comparative data on diversity of macroinvertebrates revealed that the number of taxa in the downstream stretch, especially close to the dam was significantly reduced.

Disregarding ecological and livelihood concerns, the Parbati hydroelectric project in Himachal Pradesh is moving forward. Experts warn that diverting water from the Parbati and its tributaries for

Weeks after Chinese officials warned of a potential environmental catastrophe, the government has announced that it needs to relocate at least four million more people away from the Three Gorges Dam

Hailed as one of the engineering feats of the 20th century, the Three Gorges Dam across China's Yangtze river is having a disastrous impact on the environment. Only a year after the completion of the

that the non-confrontational Lepchas are on an indefinite hunger strike against dams in north Sikkim shows how much of a threat they perceive these projects to be. The surge of support from

The Kathmandu reaches of the Bagmati River are widely characterised as severely degraded. This article explores the rhetorical life and death of the concept of a 'Bagmati civilisation': a particular configuration of history, cultural identity and river ecology espoused by a prominent Nepali river restorationist.

construction on Gujarat's ambitious Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project in Ahmedabad, restarted in the second week of March, 2007. The project had been stalled since August 2006, when heavy

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