Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
HELPED along with generous grants from the World Bank and Japan to green the Aravallis, plus its own sizeable forestry budget, the Rajasthan government has embarked on an ambitious compensatory reafforestation plan. District collectors have been asked to identify areas which can be set aside to form part of a …
THE PRIME Minister needs to be congratulated for his decision to set up a department exclusively in charge of wasteland afforestation. He shifted the charge from the ministry of forests and environment to the ministry of rural development, leaving several officials tongue-tied. If this step lends greater importance to the …
The minister of state for environment, Kamal Nath, had some radical words to say in Rio. "I don't understand why people here are talking about forests being national or global resources. In my country, they are more community resources," he told an interviewer. Surely, that statement will gladden the hearts …
PURI HAS an NGO with a difference. Residents of 1,200 villages in the district have got together to form the Brukshya O Jeevara Bandhu Parishad (BOJBP) to protect their environment and devised quaint methods for ecological regeneration. Seedlings are demanded as part of dowry and planting trees, instead of feeding …
SEABUCKTHORN, a multi-purpose shrub-tree, can improve the lives of millions of marginal farmers living in the Himalayan wastelands. The shrub-tree, found almost all over the Himalaya, has the potential to transform both the economy and the ecology of the region, say scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development …
LOFTY afforestation goals come to grief on a very mundane issue: the survival of people in and around the project area. One such is a US $30 million reforestation programme in the Chopta region of the Himalaya, funded by the World Bank. The government blamed the villagers for the failure, …
CALL IT a guilty conscience or call it uncanny business sense. But Toyota, Japan's largest car manufacturer, is busy trying to produce a genetically-engineered tree which can absorb larger amounts of carbon dioxide than its more natural counterparts. The research programme first aims at identifying and cultivating existing tree species …
FOR the first time possibly since independence, the forest cover in India has recorded an increase. The green cover has gone up from 19.47 per cent to 19.49 per cent, with an annual incremental growth of- 28,000 ha, says the latest issue of The State of Forest Report, prepared by …
THAT rural Indian women are the worst victims of environmental degradation is well-known. But what happens when women assert themselves? This is the story of the four-year-long struggle of the women of Muvasa village in the Panchmahals district of Gujarat who made degraded common land arable. To my mind, it …
THE Banihal Valley in Jammu's Pirp.anjal range, which separates the Jammu region from the Kashmir Valley, appears like an oasis amid barren hills. This area, 2,000 m above sea level, which was until recently totally denuded, is now green with fruit trees and vegetable patches. The transformation is due to …