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 …
EUROPEAN countries are making substantial investments in environmental protection. Amongst members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- the Paris-based club of affluent countries -- Austria spends the most on environmental protection, as a proportion of its GNP. West Germany is second and now that the two …
INDUSTRIAL towns with a high growth and, therefore, high pollution potential will come in for special attention from the Punjab Pollution Control Board, under a new initiative to deal with pollution in the state. Amritsar, Batala, Gobindgarh Mandi, Jalandhar, Khanna, Ludhiana, Nangla and Phagwara have already been earmarked by the …
MOST OF the world believes industry can only harm the environment, Stephen Schmidheiny disagrees and in Changing Course, he explains why. The main theme of his book is that governments and industry can cooperate to preserve the environment, or at least not harm it. The argument, for which one has …
ASIA TOPS the list of continents with the highest deforestation rate. The initial estimates of the 1990 tropical forest resources census show about 3.6 million ha -- or about 1.2 per cent -- of forest land are cleared each year in Asia. This is much higher than in either Latin …
THOUGH no commitments have as yet been made by industrialised countries to reduce &rbon; emissions, car manufacturers in the West are already gearing themselves up for renewable and cleaner technologies in the near future. The European Community is pushing for stabilisation of carbon emissions by the year 2000. In Germany, …
THE ONE lasting reminder of the Rio conference will be the Commission on Sustainable Development, which is to be set up under the aegis of the United Nations to supervise the implementation of Agenda 21. There was much opposition to the idea of the commission from both southern and northern …
RIO ESTABLISHED that the fight over biodiversity is intensely commercial. Worried about its billion-dollar biotechnology industry, the US refused to sign the biodiversity convention which, by the end of the conference, had been signed by over 150 countries. And it rejected the southern demand for a legally-binding code of conduct …
HERALDED in with drums, the fortnight-long Global Forum, held parallel to UNCED, was probably the largest ever gathering of NGOs in the world. It forced the world to sit up and recognise that governments don't always speak for all the people. From Bahais to Brahma Kumaris and Anand Margis to …
SINCE 1989, the state of New Jersey in USA has issued US $5 million worth of fines and handed prison sentences amounting to 165 years for environmental crimes. It could do this thanks to the Green Police, New Jersey's answer to the growing menace of indiscriminate toxic waste disposal. The …
EVEN AS the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) goes ahead with Delhi's first mass residential colony based on solar passive architecture, architects continue to hold reservations about the project. Officials in the department of science and technology (DST), which is bearing half the project's research and development costs of Rs …
BIG BROTHER government has decided to work towards removing two more 'hurdles' for industrialists in the country -- the state pollution control boards (SPCBs) and the ministry of environment and forests (MEF). Indian and foreign industrialists have long bemoaned the inspector raj of the SPCBs. Partly to get around this …
TRADE wars between Japan and USA are common, but now there are major technology wars brewing. And the US companies may be getting an upper hand. Japanese electronics have flooded markets worldwide with cheaply-produced and diverse products, but their capacity to be innovative does not seem to match their manufacturing …
When governments are desperate for cash, they sell death. While South American countries deal in cocaine, the US government is taking to aggressive pushing of its tobacco industry. In Korea, the opening up of cigarette markets recently increased smoking rates among male Korean teenagers from 18.4 per cent to 29.8 …
THE UNION minister of environment and forests was under fire at the last National Development Council (NDC) meeting both from a section of central ministers as well as chief ministers who accused his ministry of being the biggest hurdle to development. While the chief ministers' ire was expected, the Union …
BROADLY speaking, Indian environmentalists can be divided into two categories -- those propagating the claims of four-legged mammals and those who like their mammals to be two-legged. Less cryptically, we may call these two types 'wildlife conservationists' and 'social ecologists', respectively. For wildlife conservationists, the preservation of the wilderness in …
TODAY, the world seems to be divided into two groups: those who believe in the restrained use of natural resources as they are finite and those who hold that human technological intervention can stretch these resources indefinitely. Ponting, a British civil servant and historian, places himself firmly in the first …
DIAMONDS may be forever, but the dinosaurs of yore must have wished it otherwise. The glittering jewel is now being held responsible for their extinction. Canadian scientist David Brez Carlisle feels that dinosaurs perished in a storm of diamonds from outer space. This adds a now dimension to the traditional …
THE department of power has set up a working group to prepare new legislation to modify the 14 existing Acts that affect energy consumption. The 10-member panel comprises experts in energy, law, industrial development and representatives from the concerned departments and ministries. With this, the government would seem to have …
AFTER two disappointing failures in 1987 and 1988, the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) was finally launched on May 20 from the Sriharikota range. It successfully placed the 106-kg SROSS (Stretched Rohini -Satellite Series) satellite in an orbit 450 km above the earth. The successful launch came as a, much-needed …
THE biodiversity convention is ready for signature at the Earth Summit. But from the negotiations just concluded in Nairobi, it is clear that the South is in for a bad bargain. It stands to lose access over its biodiversity - plant and animal genetic resources - while it gains only …
