His ministry had earlier put a stop on the project citing ecological damage Delhi Govt. insisted that only the dam can solve Capital's water woes Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said he will undertake an inspection of the Nahan Valley in Himachal Pradesh, the site of the proposed Renuka Dam, which has been turned down by his office on the grounds that it involves the axing of 1.77...

Two Adivasi student organisations today burnt the effigies of Assam water resources minister Prithvi Majhi, Lok Sabha MP Joseph Toppo and Rajya Sabha MP Silvius Condopan, all hailing from their community, in protest against the trio’s “silence” over the eviction drive at Ripu-Chirang reserve forest. The All Adivasi Students Association of Assam and the All Santhali Students Union alleged that the leaders were indifferent to the plight of the community. They...

About three kilometers from this village, across dirt tracks and open scrubland, there is a settlement of seven mud huts bordered by millet and lentil fields. No electricity or telephone poles run to these huts. There’s not a satellite dish to be seen. In the dry, open land that surrounds the settlement — part of the great Thar Desert that dominates the western part of the state of Rajasthan — black...

Dams may have been the temples of modern India to Jawaharlal Nehru, but Uttarakhand’s BJP government has stopped work on a hydel project because priests and devotees fear it might submerge a Kali temple. The government’s surprise move on Thursday on the 400MW Alakananda project is steeped in local politics and coincides with a countrywide debate on development-versus-environment. But it also highlights how easy it has become to block power projects in...

Several among the 70 known species of mangroves are at high risk of extinction and may disappear well before the next decade if protective measures are not enforced, warns the first global study by U.S. researchers. Eleven of these have been placed on the red list of threatened species kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The study, led by Beth A. Polidoro attached to the Global Marine Species...