-The Guardian By shunning all but organic farming techniques, the Himalayan state will cement its status as a paradigm of sustainability Bhutan plans to become the first country in the world to turn its agriculture completely organic, banning the sales of pesticides and herbicides and relying on its own animals and farm waste for fertilisers. But rather than accept that this will mean farmers of the small Himalayan kingdom of 1.2 million people...

-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: The furore against the state government resuming land acquisition for South Korean steel giant Posco seems to be spilling out of national borders with Netherland-based Friends of the Earth International appealing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, chief minister Naveen Patnaik and National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to stop police 'excesses' at the proposed Posco site in Jagatsinghpur district. The foreign NGO, which has been fighting for environmental...

-The Hindu Thousands of acres of uncultivable forested hills in Haryana, Gurgaon and Faridabad face the same prospect Gurgaon: Two decades ago when Sunil’s parents sold off 25 acres of their family’s share of land in the Mangar forests of Faridabad, they and other villagers thought the buyers were fools to buy it up because they were assured that they could continue to use it for grazing cattle and firewood. Today, 25-year-old...

-The Indian Express The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has recommended diverting over 500 hectares of Forest Land for an iron ore mining project in the Saranda forest division of Jharkhand, part of the core area of the Singhbhum Elephant Reserve, India's first reserve for elephants. The FAC is a statutory body that advises the environment ministry on diverting Forest Land. Its recommendations are not binding. The Singhbhum reserve, created in 2001, is spread...

-IPS News Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report. The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical...