-The Hindu Journalists need to adopt a set of integrity measures in order to police the boundaries between the market and political power   Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and the world’s wealthiest woman, is seeking three board seats following her purchase of 18.7 per cent of Fairfax which owns most papers in Australia not controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd. There has already been considerable upheaval in two of the Fairfax papers...

Model community forestry initiatives in Orissa are defying Forest Department efforts to control and exploit the region’s forests. ‘Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees / And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!’ Thus goes a song of the Muria Adivasis in the forests of Bastar in central India. Encapsulated in this simple expression, however, is...

-FAO Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture play a crucial role in food and nutrition security and in providing for the livelihoods of millions of people. FAO's latest flagship publication on the state of fisheries and aquaculture, launched at the opening of the 30th session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries, highlights the sector's vital contribution to the world's well-being and prosperity, a point reflected in the recent Rio+20 Outcome Document. The State of...

-The Telegraph The Centre has brought back quarterly monitoring of the performances of all ministries and projects after having let the practice lapse into half-yearly reviews about five years ago. Projects and ministries will be set targets and these will be reviewed at three levels — by the PMO, Planning Commission and administrative ministries — plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today. “We have set quarterly targets for all the ministries...

-The Economic Times The Centre's efforts to ensure economic empowerment of tribals in forest areas received a fillip with the Maharashtra government's order to bring all joint forest management committees under the control of gram sabhas.  The state government resolution transferred all rights of minor forest produce and major timber to the gram sabha-elected joint forest management committees. Despite legal guarantees, many gram sabhas (village assemblies) are unable to have a final...