-Scroll.in The suggested changes will weaken environmental clearance processes, favour industry, say experts. In April, as India was busy in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the central government moved to “re-engineer” the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006, which governs environment clearance for industrial projects. Experts who have analysed the zero draft (a first attempt at the draft) of the Environmental Impact Assessment notification 2019 opined that it weakens the existing notification and favours the...

-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ tribals from the Forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” Forest-dwellers. When we first heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...

-The Hindu Unlike the rest of the world, India is stridently moving away from community-involved conservation models In February this year, one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries issued a court order which stood to evict more than a million Forest-dwelling people from their homes. More damningly, India, a state that supports about 8% of global species diversity and over 100 million Forest-dwellers, did not even put up a legal defence before...

-PTI “Pollution does affect health, but to create such a panicky situation and say millions of people are dying, I do not agree with that” New Delhi: Union minister Harsh Vardhan has discredited the recent global reports claiming over one million deaths in India due to air pollution, saying such studies are only aimed at “causing panic”. The Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Chandni...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use Forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...