Recognizing the role that forests play in everything from mitigating climate change to providing wood, medicines and livelihoods for people worldwide, the United Nations today kicked off a year-long celebration to raise awareness of the value of this important resource. “Forests for People” is the main theme of the International Year of Forests, which was launched at a ceremony at UN Headquarters in New York attended by world leaders, Nobel Laureate...

More than a thousand villagers from Chhattisgarh's coal-rich Raigarh district have expressed their opposition to a mine proposed by Vedanta Resources, a giant multinational. Vedanta, if granted clearance, hopes to mine four million tonnes of coal a year to fuel the expansion of its 810-MW captive power plant on the Bharat Aluminum Company (BALCO) premises in Korba, Chhattisgarh. Vedanta acquired a 51 per cent stake in BALCO in 2001, and the...

India's environment ministry has given conditional approval to South Korean company Posco's plan to build a steel plant in the eastern state of Orissa. The ministry has also cleared the plant's captive port and power plant if certain conditions are met. The $12bn plant is India's largest foreign investment project. Last year, a government panel said that environmental clearances for the plant be scrapped. Critics say the project will exhaust iron deposits in...

Just two and half years ago, Kandhamal was India’s shame as a communal violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu seer left 38 people dead, thousands of houses and hundreds of churches burnt and vandalised and several thousand people scurrying to relief camps for safety. As Christian were slayed and attacked by VHP and RSS goons across the district, it forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to call it a...

Two-and-A-half years ago, Kandhamal was tagged as a “national shame”, after communal violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu seer left 38 people dead, with houses and churches burnt and vandalised, and thousands of people homeless. But on February 2, Kandhamal is set to get a different tag — one of “national pride” — as the Union Ministry of Rural Development awards it for being one of the top 10...