As Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh fight the fury of flood caused by annual northeast monsoon, a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on the natural disaster in Uttarakhand, which took place in June 2013, has been made available in the public domain recently. The CAG report discloses how various development activities in the state flouted guidelines issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Expert Committee on glaciers...
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Odisha tribals lose food source as teak plantations deluge their ‘forest farms’ -Jayashree Nandi
-The Times of India BURLUBARU, KANDHAMAL: Kanigalaru Majhi's food stocks are running out. A middle aged woman from the Kutia Kondh tribe in Kandhamal's Burlubaru village in Odisha's Kandhamal district, Majhi is worried there will be a time soon when they will no longer be able to depend on the hills for their food because teak plantations have supplanted entire patches of forest where Kanigalaru and her tribespeople sourced millets, pulses, tubers...
More »Lie of the land: Only 39 of 133 GM crop field trials monitored in 6 years -Dipu Rai
-DNA The Centre has always claimed that the country has a robust regulatory mechanism Busting the claims of the Indian government and scientists that the country has a robust regulatory mechanism to test genetically modified (GM) crops, toxic loopholes are emerging. From 2008 to 2014, only 39 of the 133 GM crop field trials were properly monitored, leaving the rest for unknown risks and possible health hazards to common people. Documents accessed...
More »Supreme Court panel says no to mega rail link through Western Ghats -Jay Mazoomdaar
-The Indian Express A joint venture between the Railways and the Karnataka government, the original project involved construction of 329 bridges and 29 tunnels, and required felling of more than 2.5 lakh trees on 965 hectares of forest land. The Rs 2,315-crore Hubli-Ankola railway line, cutting across the Western Ghats in Karnataka, has been shown the red signal by a Supreme Court panel on forest and wildlife, which said that the...
More »Lo and behold! Maharashtra's Rs 4,845 crore irrigation project without water -Yogesh Pawar
-DNA Mumbai: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an irrigation project? Water? Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Union Union Ministry for Forests, Environment & Climate Change (MoEF). How else would it have cleared the the Rs 4,845 crore, 23.66 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) Krishna Marathwada Lift Irrigation Scheme (KMLIS) without water availability? The environmental clearance given on 24th June...
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