-The Hindu Instead of opening a debate on the Gadgil panel's report on the Western Ghats, the government has chosen to sideline and replace it with another by an alternate group This is a challenging time in India's development history where a number of tenets of environmental governance are being questioned by the imperative of growth. Environmental governance in India is under assault, and is thus in need of both fresh thinking,...

-The United Nations The Asia-Pacific region, which has overtaken the rest of the world in consumption of raw materials as affluence and manufacturing increase, must boost its resource efficiency or risk losing ground in lifestyle, economic growth and environmental sustainability, according to a UN report released today. From 1970-2008, consumption of construction minerals increased 13.4 times, metal ores and industrial minerals consumption 8.6, fossil fuels 5.4, and Biomass 2.7 times, according to...

-The Hindu Says potential and implications of shale gas policy need to be examined The government was all for creating a viable and competitive domestic production base and incentivise use of clean energy in the country, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia said at the fourth Clean Energy Ministerial here on Wednesday. Efforts were on to encourage domestic production and usage. "We are interested in incentivising the use of...

-The Hindu Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget for 2013-14 will be remembered not only for its strategies to stimulate economic growth and control fiscal deficit, but also for the importance given to the needs of the underprivileged sections of our society. In the field of agriculture, he has adopted the following three pronged strategy: 1. Defend the gains already made in the original green revolution areas like Punjab and Haryana: For this purpose...

-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...