Focus may be on forestry issues and reducing emissions from deforestation This beach resort, swarming with tourists and sports utility vehicles and having opulent hotels and evident unsustainability, may not be the ideal place for a climate change conference but the real issues of climate change are too critical not to be debated anywhere. The United Nations Climate Change Conference that gets under way here on Monday may not result in much...

The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has given environment clearance to the controversial Jaitapur nuclear power project slated to come up in Madban village (Ratnagiri district) along the Konkan coast. This is the second major project, after the Navi Mumbai airport, to be cleared by minister Jairam Ramesh in a week. The 9,900-mw Jaitapur nuclear power plant, the country's largest, will be set up in collaboration with the French...

The Union Environment Ministry on Friday issued a show cause notice to the controversial Lavasa Corporation Limited (LCL), raising serious questions over a number of its constructions that it deems as ‘violations.' Lavasa, India's first hill city, is the ambitious project undertaken by Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) about 45 km from Pune. To be built over 25,000 acres, the luxurious city now faces a serious problem with the Ministry notice. The company...

In the run up to the next global jamboree on climate change, in the tourism-cum-summitry town of Cancun, Mexico, the government has come out with an Indian view of global warming, based on indigenous research. The upshot of the effort is a much more worrisome portrayal of the challenge of climate change. The Indian studies forecast that mean temperature will rise in India by around 2ºC by 2030, rather than...

The Expert Appraisal Committee of the Union ministry of environment & forests will submit its report soon to the ministry on the Posco project after scrutinizing the Comprehensive Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) submitted by the company. "The EAC would submit its report soon to the MOEF after scrutinizing the Comprehensive EIA submitted by Posco India. The EAC met yesterday for over three hours and there we reiterated our stand on issues...