Coastal Zone Management Authorities alerted National authority to review the actions taken The Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) violations in all States and Union Territories should be identified by June, according to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest. The Ministry alerted all the State governments and the State Coastal Zone Management Authorities regarding the decision on Thursday. Incidentally, the draft CRZ notification issued by the Ministry on September 15 last year had included the...

There is more trouble in store for South Korean steel maker Posco’s Orissa project. Shoreline surveys have found the state’s coastline to be highly erosive. Worse still, 50%, that is 4.8 km of the 9.3 km coastline along the proposed captive port site at Jatadhari is eroding. This is likely to put a spanner in the works for the South Korean company, which has been insistent on a separate captive...

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, will make a decision in the next week that could define the future of the country: whether to approve a $12 billion South Korean-owned steel plant, the largest potential foreign direct investment ever on the subcontinent. The plant, proposed by South Korea's Posco, has been in the works for years. It already has been cleared by the environment ministry, which Mr. Ramesh runs, and endorsed by...

The government must stop dilly-dallying over the project and apply the law regardless of the fact that it is India's single largest foreign investment proposal. TWO giant metallurgical projects, both in Orissa. Both promoted by big multinational corporations with tremendous influence. Both opposed by environmental and tribal rights activists because they would displace vulnerable people and destroy fragile ecosystems. Both backed strongly by State-level and national lobbies that claim they...

Making fresh demand for withdrawal of clearances accorded to Posco's mega steel plant, Left parties today sought shifting of the project from the proposed site near Paradip to any nearby place in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district. The demand was made before the Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh when a delegation of the Left parties including CPI, CPI(M), Forward Bloc along with RJD and Samajwadi Party, met him at New Delhi. In a joint...