-The Hindu Plea against nod for felling of trees New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has held that Aravallis in Faridabad district will be considered as deemed forest. The NGT was hearing a plea against the Haryana government permitting felling of more than 7,000 trees for a group housing project, to be undertaken by Bharti Land Limited. A Bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said, “It is difficult to uphold...

-The Hindu Trees in plantations, private lands should not come under it, says expert panel A high-power committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recommended that forest surveys — the biennial exercise by the government to estimate forest cover — explicitly demarcate trees grown in forests from those grown outside, that is, in plantations and private lands. Currently, the government counts both towards estimating the portion of...

-The Indian Express PET bottles imported for processing in SEZs had increased substantially. New Delhi: The government has plugged a loophole that allowed the import of plastic waste into India for processing. “…Solid plastic waste has been prohibited from import into the country including in Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and by Export Oriented Units (EOU),” the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) said in an order made public on Wednesday. The...

-The Hindu The new CRZ notification of 2018 now reads as a rejection of science and the anticipated impacts from climate change In late December, the government approved the Draft Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2018, which had been earlier circulated by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC). The CRZ consists of designated areas along the coast that are regulated by the government. The government introduced the new CRZ...

-The Hindu In addition, 11 tigers and 13 lions died in railway and road accidents in the past three years Kolkata: In 2016, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) released ‘Eco-friendly measures to mitigate impacts of linear infrastructure’, an advisory document for mitigating human-animal conflicts. Despite this advisory, and many others issued by conservationists and organisations, deaths of wild animals in road and railway accidents have continued unabated. The MoEFCC...