Vedanta Aluminium has halted its expansion programme at the alumina refinery at Lanjigarh, in Orissa, after the government issued a notification making it mandatory for companies to seek environment clearance for any major change in processes. On August 24, the Central government said that Vedanta Aluminium had not sought prior approval for expanding the refinery capacity to 6 million tonnes from 1 million tonnes. Another government decision that day, announced...

Mining operations in Vizag to be kept on hold After the bold action taken by the Union Environment and Forest Ministry against Vedanta's plans to mine bauxite in Orissa, the clutch of bauxite and alumina projects in Visakhapatnam district in Andhra Pradesh may now feel the heat. Already, there is lurking fear in the bauxite mining and alumina refining industry that their projects could be next in the firing line by the...

Build-up of different types of resistance could make it more difficult to manage the plants using herbicides. Transgenes present in 80 per cent of wild canola found by study Authorities had anticipated the existence of GM “volunteers” Researchers in the U.S. have found new evidence that genetically modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for decades. A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for canola. Transgenes were...

In the summer of 2006, I travelled with a group of scholars and writers through the district of Dantewada, then (as now) the epicentre of the conflict between the Indian State and Maoist rebels. Writing about my experiences in a four-part series published in The Telegraph, I predicted that the conflict would intensify, because the Maoists would not give up their commitment to armed struggle, while the government would not...

A leading Dutch environment agency reported on Monday that the seminal 2007 UN scientific report on climate change is too generalized and has even more errors than discovered so far -- including one contributed by the agency itself. But the review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency claimed the errors had no effect on the fundamental conclusion by UN panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is...