The recently concluded Parliament session saw the passage of the highly controversial “Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023” amid wide protests and without much discussion. The bill is aimed to amend the erstwhile Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Among the changes suggested, the below preamble was inserted into the act, and the “Forest (Conservation) Act” is substituted by “Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam” in the principal Act. While the Environment Ministry claims that...

The World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2022, released in December 2022, provides its readers a plethora of useful statistics and data across the countries pertaining to agriculture and food security. The yearbook by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) primarily covers four themes -- Economic Dimensions of Agriculture; Production, Trade and Prices of Commodities; Food Security and Nutrition; and Sustainability and Environmental Aspects of Agriculture.  While going through the report,...

-Scroll.in An Assam MP explains why he introduced the Climate Migrants (Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill in Lok Sabha. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, nearly five million Indians were forced to leave their homes because of climate-related events in 2021. While many of these people were displaced temporarily, internal displacement due to climatic conditions stands to be a major challenge for India in the years to come. Rising water levels, according...

-Down to Earth In 41% of the cases, communities allege that authorities or project proponents did not follow proper procedures for the takeover of land Disputes concerning commons land accounted for 75.94 per cent of all the existing and resolved land-related conflicts, according to a new report. The report titled Land Locked: Investments and Lives in Land Conflicts, released by Land Conflict Watch (LCW), a Delhi-based research agency, arrived at this conclusion after...

-Newsclick.in Many farmers also brought uprooted electric meters from their tube wells, dumped them on the premises of PVVNL and asked the officials to deposit them in the office. Lucknow: Farmers from across Western Uttar Pradesh intensified their ongoing protest by allegedly holding government officials hostage for several hours inside the Paschim Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL) under the banner of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU). The protest is against installing electric meters...