Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of News Item titled "2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit in Thanjavur appearing in The Hindu dated 19.05.2025". The application is registered suo-motu on the basis of the news item titled 2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit …
DESIGNER food may drive people crazy, but not quite in the way biotechnology firms would want. A few weeks ago, an unidentified group destroyed a test field of genetically engineered maize in Holland. And, there is growing concern in the USA about the effects of genetically modified food on human …
THE EARTH Summit was over three months ago, but its decisions may already be coming apart. Africa's victory in securing support for the negotiation of a desertification convention may have been run into the sand, says a Panos Institute report. Even if the next session of the UN General Assembly …
THE EXACT origin of neem is uncertain, but today it is found almost everywhere in the tropical belt. Some say neem is native to the entire Indian subcontinent, but others expand this to dry forest areas throughout south and southeast Asia, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Indian …
AND, NOW, it's environmentally conscious fashion designers. Advocating a switch to environmentally friendly cotton with brand names like Green Cotton 2000 and dissuading consumers with posters proclaiming "Danger Cotton", US fashion designers are promoting organically grown cotton in a big way, says Pesticide News (Issue 16, 1992). This has brought …
THE NORTH America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which will bind the USA, Mexico and Canada into a common market, has everyone wondering what the pact will do to the environment of the region. The key concern is that US companies hiding behind less stringent Mexican norms will reduce their own …
ALL IS not shipshape at Japan's dry dock. Recently, six Greenpeace activists, protesting the first shipment of one tonne of plutonium from France to Japan, were arrested by the Japanese government. The plutonium will fuel Japan's future fast-breeder nuclear power programme. The protestors pointed out the vulnerability of carrying the …
A NON-GOVERNMENTAL report on the state of India's health has expressed concern that environment impact assessments of development programmes almost always ignore their effect on people's health. "What is important is that infrastructural projects that are sanctioned -- even after impact assessment -- might even be increasing morbidity (illness) or …
THERE is really pleasing no one. Last month, the Indonesian government lifted an eight-year ban on export of raw wood -- and came under fire from both environmentalists and business interests. The ban was lifted in response to a demand by the General Agreement on Trade and Tarriffs (GATT), which …
WHEN the UN threatened to block relief supplies to Somalia unless its troops were deployed there, the warring factions in the drought-stricken, strife-ridden country, after rejecting the idea, capitulated. But even before the 500 UN soldiers arrived, local militia looted a part of the first UN food shipments. Fierce fighting …
1992 (yet to be announced): 1. Compensatory afforestation for plantation along rail, road canal: The revised guidelines would permit the use of protected forest for linear plantation without insisting upon non-forest land for compensatory afforestation. 2. Transmission towers and lines: There will be no need for compensatory afforestation on non-forest …
WHEN THE slogan "Declare agriculture an industry" was raised at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session in Tirupati some months ago, it was an attempt to include rural toilers in the ruling party's grand policies of social reconstruction. But, at best, the slogan is a redundancy, for agriculture is …
ERSTWHILE communist Germany finds to its concern that it really is greener on the other side. Germany's ever-strict pollution control measures have given rise to severe problems for the five states that earlier constituted East Germany. The states were given a year's grace period to set up administrative machinery to …
SIX ASBESTOS companies have been convicted by a Baltimore Circuit Court jury in what is expected to be a model for the over 100,000 asbestos personal injury claims pending before federal and state courts across the United States. The decision that all six defendants were responsible for manufacturing products they …
EFFORTS of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to create a gene bank appear to have stalled barely a year after steps were taken to start it. The proposal to start the gene bank was accepted at the 1990 Male meeting of SAARC and was taken up at …
IT"S A sweet end to the bitter battle for the Rs-5,000-crore pharmaceuticals industry. The new draft drug policy promises more profit to the industry, and in doing so, puts the need for inexpensive medicines on the back burner. The industry has used every trick in the book, including contrived shortages, …
DESPITE strides in asthma treatment, the incidence of the disease and deaths due to it are escalating. Researchers now feel that growing industrialisation and pollution could well be responsible for this increase worldwide. Every year in USA alone, some 4,000 asthma victims die and another 500,000 are hospitalised. In 1977, …
Environment ministry guidelines state that many of the adverse impacts of thermal plants can be foreseen and minimised through judicious siting, preventive and control measures and effective environmental management. The ministry has been trying to impose very strict emission controls and other standards to mitigate the environmental problems of power …
I HAVE been uncomfortable with the "transfer of technology" demands of developing countries during their environmental dialogue with the North. Let me explain: We do stress, based on irrefutable data, that the North is responsible for the bulk of the perturbation that human beings have caused to the properties of …
BASUDEO ORAON had lost all hopes of ever retrieving his young son Daham from the bondage of Jagdish Kushwaha, a carpet loom owner of Lohara village in UP's Mirzapur district. Daham had been working for the last two years for Kushwaha and Basudeo's efforts to secure either his son's release …
IT WAS a typical Indian village, with low, thatched roofs, mud walls and floor. Yet, as I went around I was told, "This is Germany, this is Canada and this, America". Strange names for huts in a village? Not if the village is UP's Varanasi district, also known as Dollarland …
