With 1.8 billion people threatened by absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world’s population facing potential shortages, countries must better protect and manage forests to ensure the provision of clean water to vulnerable communities, a United Nations-backed forum warned today. “Forests are part of the natural infrastructure of any country and are essential to the water cycle,” said UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forestry Department Assistant Director...

India has become the first country in the world to incorporate Tsunami proofing for environmental clearances of major projects, after titanic Tsunami devastated key projects in Japan this month. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Thursday asked the Expert Appraisal Committees, mandated to given environment clearances to projects, to include tsunami related risks in the terms of reference for Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports for four sectors --- nuclear power, infrastructure,...

Releasing the election manifesto here on Wednesday, West Bengal Left Front Committee Chairman Biman Bose said the eighth Left Front government will focus on “agriculture, industry, peace, democracy and progress,” in the State if it returns to power. Listing the objectives of the Front in the coming five years, the manifesto states that it wants to ensure that West Bengal is one of the top-ranked States on the three parameters of...

As the demand for a ban on Endosulfan in India is gaining pitch and Karnataka being the latest state to ban the pesticide, the Pesticide Manufacturers and Formulators Association of India (PMFAI) is going around crying foul. They are leaving no stone unturned to save endosulfan. Press meets across the country and plugged newspaper reports maligning studies that have indicted endosulfan in the past is a desperate attempt to save...

The ongoing nuclear incidents involving the Fukushima reactor in earthquake/tsunami affected Japan has posed serious questions already to the nuclear industry in India as well. Prabir Purkayastha writes. As I write these lines, it appears that Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant is moving towards a core meltdown as it has lost control of the cooling system. An explosion has blown the wall of one of the buildings there and radioactive iodine and...