-Livemint The Subramanian committee reviewing environment laws was undemocratic in process and results A high-level committee, led by retired bureaucrat T.S.R. Subramanian and set up under the environment ministry to review laws that protect the country's environment, submitted its report on 18 November. There's no dispute that there is a need to review the entire body of environment laws, such as the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, Wildlife (Protection)...

-The Telegraph Guwahati (Assam): Aaranyak, an Assam-based NGO working for the Conservation of nature, has won an United Nations award for its community-based flood early warning system that has benefited 40 villages in flood-prone Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts. It has won the award along with Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) for the 2014 Lighthouse Activities awards under the focus area of information and communication technology (ICT) solutions. The award was...

-Deccan Herald Western Ghats are particularly rich in wild relatives of tuber crops. Tuber crops not only enrich the diet of the villagers in this region, but also possess medicinal properties to cure many ailments or at least check their incidence. The eco-nomically and socially important tropical tuber crops are cassava (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), yams (Dioscorea alata, D.esculenta and D.rotundata), aroids which include elephant foot yam, taro, tannia,...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government could soon undertake extensive changes in its land use and acquisition policies as the PMO puts pressure on the agriculture ministry to implement the recommendations of an eight-year-old report that was prepared by a working group chaired by the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. The report had proposed that industries and developers could make use of productive agricultural land for industrialisation and urbanisation by ensuring...

-The Indian Express It took the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) six years, 18 drafts and a prod from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to finalise the Guidelines for Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) this August. Three months on, it is yet to notify the rules that would allow it to collect from domestic and foreign companies 0.1-1 per cent of their ex-factory gross sales of products using biological resources and traditional...