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 …
THE REPORT of the Independent Review (RIR) of the Sardar Sarovar was expected to look at Sardar Sarovar and other projects on the Narmada not only from the viewpoint of displacement and rehabilitation, but more holistically to see whether submergence itself could be reduced to manageable proportions. Instead, the committee …
AT THE outset, I would like to mention that I have not been able to read the Morse report. My opinions are based on the summaries of the report that have been published in the newspapers. I find the report disappointing in the sense of not "being well done". Going …
I HAVE not seen the Morse report. So I cannot comment on its specifics. But I have some general observations to make on the Narmada project and other issues of this kind. I believe that rehabilitation and resettlement must precede the launching of a project and not follow it. Secondly, …
THE RIR had raised considerable expectations in western India. The report, however, came as a damp squib. The only substantive comment made by the report relates to basic hydrology, which states, "We found that there is good reason to believe that the project will not perform as planned." The reference …
• Pesticides manufacturer Monsanto is testing genetically-engineered cotton resistant to the deadly bellworm. The cotton contains genes from a natural ly-occurri ng bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the bollworm. • Hundreds of wind turbines produced by the Japanese corporation, Mitsubishi, are now being used on one of the largest …
THE SOUTH had a two-point agenda in Rio: funds and technology. It failed to get both. The North continued to insist that technology is a private resource which states cannot give away, whereas the South continued to ask for technology on preferential and concessional terms. If there was any movement …
THE CONFERENCE has just ratified the Earth Charter, the name of which has been changed to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development at the behest of developing countries. This puts environment before industrialisation, lays down the responsibilities of developed and developing nations and stresses that development has to be …
THIS YEAR, US President George Bush announced that US $1.4 billion is to be made available in 1993 to the US Global Change Research Programme (USGCRP), which will lead to a massive increase in humankind's understanding of the earth's atomosphere. As a part of the programme, a network of remote …
THE RECENT environmental carnival at Rio was an extremely enlightening and educative experience for me being, perhaps, the largest gathering of NGOs, on the one hand, and that of heads of governments, on the other. There were essentially two parallel events which took place in the first half of June …
THE SUB-CONTINENT, judging by these three reports, went prepared to Rio. In fact, the first report, prepared by a Sri Lankan NGO, chides UNCED for trying to save the earth without even consulting its people. The three reports focus on the major environmental problems of these countries. They draw attention …
THE RIO Earth Summit was probably the biggest media event of any UN conference in history, much more so than the last big bash -- the women's conference at Nairobi. Women are only women, after all, but the earth is the mother of us all. Something like the fear of …
STARVED of fresh water and no longer able to withstand the encroaching Arabian Sea, the Indus is dying a slow death. The channels of this mighty and historic river are running dry, while salt water is destroying the lush tamarisk forests which once lined the river, the estuarine timmar, or …
Gandhian activist M K Ghosh can rightly be called the father of the solar cooker which is being promoted in India today. When he was in prison with Rajendra Prasad during the Quit India Movement, Prasad offered him Rs 5,000 to design a working model of a solar cooker. Ghosh's …
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 …
THE SOLAR cooker programme may soon grind to a halt as a result of mandatory ISI standards to be introduced this year. The Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (DNES) has already notified that subsidies would be given only to cookers complying with ISI standards. When the DNES and the Bureau …
A visit to Kabir Basti, 60 km from Jaisalmer, reveals an affluent village of about 70 households. Every house is a pucca structure, made of the local yellow granite and arranged in neat, well-planned rows, with plenty of space in between. The children are healthy, the village has its own …
The Indian space programme has come of age with the flawless blast-off of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) in May 1992, after two successive miscarriages in 1987 and 1988. The rocket successfully placed the 106-kg Stretched Rohini Satellite Series-C (SROSS-C) into a 450-km orbit. For good measure, it also …
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 …
WIDESPREAD deforestation and heavy siltation are steadily destroying the beautiful, but ecologically fragile, coral reefs of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. The islands experience high rainfall, 50 per cent to 90 per cent of which runs off into the sea. Bad land use practices result in high turbidity which then …
HEPATITIS B is a disease more lethal than AIDS, claiming more lives in a day than the latter does in a year. But now genetic engineering has made possible large-scale production of hepatitis B vaccine at only 2 per cent of the earlier cost. The worldwide Expanded Programme on Immunisation …
