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 …
A airport project is threatening the al of the rare pink dolphins that off Hong Kong's western coast. as Chek Lap Kok, a small island off imm that lies to Hong Kong's west, is Z" bulldozed to form a platform for r airport, environmentalists fear that etiging, reclamation, underwater wing …
European Laboratory for Particle Physics sees little chance of an agreement g hammered out soon for the financing of Europe's next generation particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHCJ (Down to Earth, September 30, 1994). CERN's 2 host countries, France and Switzerland, continue to stonewall efforts by Germany and the …
INDIAN is well within earshot of the worldwide call for environmetal consciousness. None can doubt its commitment to gest conservation. But here ties the catch. Seen from below, r" conservation measures have occluded the people from it green boardroom. The commoner has lost control over nst resources, and competition with …
Firms owned by the Indonesian government will have a 49 per cent stake in 2 forest concessions of Barito Pacific Timber, according to an agreement reached in September between the government and the timber giant. The government, in turn, will renew Barito's permits for logging. Indonesian officials are euphoric over …
MYANMAR'S minister of forestry Chit Swe has launched, with much fanfare, an ambitious project to artificially inseminate a 6,000-strong herd of elephants, which lift heavy logs in the teak forests of Myanmar. Swe has enlisted the help of Michael J Schmidt, chief research veterinarian of the Washington Park Zoo, in …
Rampant deforestation in Chittagong is worrying Bangladesh government authorities. According to the country's forest department, indiscriminate logging has rendered barren at least 1,620 ha of private forest land in the Chittagong district alone in the current year. Rapid urbanisation is the major factor behind the deforestation. Trees are being mowed …
FOR some time now, international funding agencies have been at pains to show that they are concerned about the environmental and social aspects of the policies they promote. Very often, such concern is expressed through velvet buzzwords used to cloak the sharp interventions they thrust upon the beneficiaries of their …
*The Yangtze, the 4th-largest river in the world, carries a substantial volume of silt. As the dam stores the flood waters, silt would accumulate and raise the riverbed, affecting navigation, power generation and, ultimately, the life of the dam. The raised water level will increase flooding of downstream areas like …
THE Vu Quang forest, a sweltering, extremely wet, slime-covered rocky terrain on the mountainous border between Laos and Vietnam, is proving to be a veritable zoo of animals unknown to science. After the discovery of the Vu Quang ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) last year (Down To Earth, August 31, 1993), biologists …
THE 1980s witnessed an unprecedented burst of writing on the forests of Amazonia. This book stands out in this motley crowd for its scholarly treatment of a subject that is voluminously documented, although frequently in partisan and impressionistic terms. When Schmink and Wood describe the residents of Sao Felix in …
ONE of the few bright spots in the recently-concluded stormy European Community (EC) summit in Corfu in Greece was the unanimous decision on the need to shut down, permanently and as quickly as possible, reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine. EC leaders decided to put their might …
THE people of the Uttar Pradesh hills have always strongly opposed attempts to snatch their traditional rights. Today, they are asserting themselves once again. At various seminars and meetings organised recently, van panchayat members have consistently voiced their aversion to impositions by officials and have instead lobbied for greater autonomy. …
IN THE tranquil village of Kunya Khali in Uttar Pradesh"s Almora district, sarpanch Sunder Singh patiently waits for the monsoon. The village is one of many in Almora, Nainital, Pithoragarh and Chamoli areas that has nurtured a panchayati forest. Unknown to Sunder Singh, however, the monsoon may be accompanied by …
1893: The British notify all Himalayan wastelands as protected forests, provoking violent reactions among the people of Kumaon and Garhwal, who lose their traditional rights over forests. 1911-17: Additional areas are appropriated as reserve forests and given to the forest department. Protestors set several hectares of forests on fire. 1931: …
1931 1976 1993 Draft Notification Control over van panchayat Revenue department (RD) given administrative and technical controls RD retains administrative control while forest department (FD) has technical advisory role Administrative and technical powers vested with RD Powers of van panchayat 1. Van panchayat (VPs) can fine offenders Rs 5 2. …
In a complete reversal of its stand, the union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) has cleared the 73.5 mw Pooyamkutty hydroelectric project in Idukki district in Kerala, endangering about 2,870 ha of state forest and the traditional way of life of thousands of mat and basket weavers. Although, the …
AMIDST the opulence of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) annual meeting, the representative of at least one government -- a large, poor country in South Asia -- was discovered staying in a hotel room that cost over $1,000 a night. The big prize, more than anything else, was Power. The …
A FIERCE battle, albeit verbal, has broken out in the US between scientists and native Indians. The bone of contention is the remains of ancient Indians dating back to 800 BC, that lie in the Hall of Records, Annapolis, Maryland. The Indians want the bones of their ancestors back, so …
FORESTS have always been the object of cornucopian myth-making. Their very location, usually on the margins of settled agriculture reinforced this identity. Nancy Peluso takes us into a realm where ambivalent Western cultural constructs came into contact with their non-Western counterparts in a colonial framework of power relations. The myth …
PAPUA New Guinea is all set to launch its "Save the Forests" campaign in a big way. Forests minister Tim Neville said that he is determined to phase out all log exports by the year 2000, in order to achieve sustainable forestry. "We have allowed a gross imbalance whereby the …
