-PTI NEW DELHI: Environment ministry has issued directions to six state governments prohibiting development activities including mining and quarrying in the 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive area of Western Ghats. The ministry's direction came weeks after it gave approval to a controversial report on Western Ghats prepared by the K Kasturirangan-led panel which recommended prohibition on development activities in 37 per cent of natural landscape that has high biological richness. In its order...

-The Hindu Warsaw: India, China and other countries in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) group on Tuesday took the position formally that the new climate agreement must not force developing countries to review their volunteered emission reduction targets. Setting themselves up in a direct confrontation with the developed countries, the LMDC made it clear that it was not in favour of doing away with the current differentiation between developing and developed...

-The Hindustan Times I remember her face but not her name. She was one of the 30 people I met one winter afternoon in 2009 at Basaguda village in Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit Bijapur district. A thin, tall woman, she stood at the edge of the group, listening attentively to her neighbour who was narrating an incident of an armed attack on the village that had left them homeless for months. When my...

-The Hindu A unique cell phone-based networking system in Chhattisgarh helps Adivasi Gonds share local news and air grievances. Deep in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, a straightforward, earthy man named Naresh Bunkar, field co-ordinator of the Adivasi Santha Manch, picks up his mobile phone and dials +918050068000, a long-distance number in Bangalore. He immediately cuts off and waits. Within seconds, he gets a call from the dialled number, and he hears a...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: World Bank has released a new report -- On Thin Ice: How Cutting Pollution can Slow Warming and Save Lives. The report that talks about ways to mitigate the effects of climate change says fast action to cut common pollutants like soot (also known as black carbon) and methane will not only slow global warming, but save millions of lives. Reductions of these so-called short-lived climate pollutants...