The World Bank has agreed to loan India $1bn (£600m) over the next five years to clean up the Ganges, one of the most polluted rivers in the world. The 2,500km (1,500 mile) river has been badly polluted by industrial chemicals, farm pesticides and other sewage. Speaking in Delhi, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said the clean up would target the entire river network. Plans involve building sewage treatment plants, revamping...

Chhattisgarh announced a proposed investment of more than Rs 1,77,000 crore in the state. Until October 2008, it had signed over a hundred mous with companies like Jindals, Tata Steel and Essar. After a couple of months of this announcement, a bureaucrat heading the state environment regulatory body resigned. “Development is the preferred option, provided the carrying capacity is available. There cannot be a trade-off at the cost of the health...

India has blocked entry to a former US naval ship heading for break-up at a scrap yard on its west coast, citing environmental and pollution concerns. The ministry of environment and forests said it inspected Platinum-II and found the ship contained toxic material.   There are also concerns that the ship has been brought into India with false documentation, the ministry says. The ship reached Indian waters last month, but was...

In one section of the university building where I teach, there is an enormous and motley collection of discarded computer-related items, stacked and piled in an unwieldy mess. This has been lying around for a while now, nearly a year, not only because of the prolonged bureaucratic procedures involved in getting material "written off", but also because no one knows what to do with the stuff once it has actually...

Member-states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) on Tuesday agreed to make a separate statement as an entity at the Copenhagen meet on climate change in December. This was decided at the Delhi Statement on Cooperation in Environment that was adopted at the end of the SAARC Ministerial meeting here. Environment Ministers of seven SAARC countries parties participated in the meet while Pakistan was represented by its...