Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Futala Lake’s charm fades amid neglect and poor maintenance appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 25.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Futala Lake’s charm fades amid neglect …
The environment ministers of Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and India are likely to meet soon to work out a clean-up programme for the Himalaya. The idea for the 'Save Himalaya' meet was mooted by Edmund Hillary, the first person to conquer Mount Everest, and M S Kohli, chairperson …
Shifting cultivation has been criticised as unscientific and blamed for the environmental problems in the hills. Do you agree? On the contrary, shifting agriculture is a fine example of how a production system can be adapted to an ecological niche. Very often shifting cultivation is talked about as a single …
THE BANGLADESH government has said the ecosystem in the southwestern part of the country is threatened by the excessive diversion of water from the Ganga at the Farakka barrage, 19.2 km from its border, writes Mustafa Kamal Majumder in a Panos report. The spokespersons say the flow of the river …
In 1977, the UN organised a conference on desertification in which a resolution was passed to start a fund for desertification control. Besides, UNEP also started a desertification programme, but most industrialised countries showed no interest in this. Do you think there has been a change in their perception? It's …
THERE is no environmental problem in the world that affects poor people as extensively or viciously as land degradation or desertification. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), about 900 million people are threatened by desertification, which affects more than 6.1 billion ha -- about 35 per cent of the …
NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisations (NGOs) maintain that to halt desertification it is necessary that nations make consumers pay the ecological costs of such products as tea, coffee, mango, timber and meat. Another essential requirement, according to NGOs, is the strengthening, politically and financially, of local communities so they can manage their land …
THERE is a complex link between trade, land degradation and socioeconomic development and Thailand's export of tapioca to the European Community (EC) provides a clear example. Farmers in Isan, Thailand, used to grow rice till the 1960s. But at that time, increasing grain prices forced cattle-breeders in Europe to look …
THE PRICE crash on the international cotton market in 1986 had serious consequences for the land in West African countries such as Chad, Burkino Fasso and Mali, where cotton is a major export crop. Cotton is produced both by small farmers and on large-scale plantations. The vegetation on savanna lands …
WHAT DOES the International Monetary Fund have to do with land degradation? On the face of it, nothing. But in reality, quite a lot. A degraded landscape in an increasingly integrated world is the end-product of a long chain of economic processes. Debt leads to debt repayment, which in turn …
THE LIMITED success of social forestry on non-forest lands has shifted attention to forest lands that form the bulk of India's lands that are uncultivated but capable of supporting vegetation. In 1988, the Union government revised its timber-oriented policy and asked state governments to treat subsistence requirements of forest-dwellers as …
THOUGH insecure land tenure is a major cause of natural resource degradation, very little attention has been paid to the role of land tenure in promoting natural resource conservation on private agricultural land. These observations from a walk through a degraded watershed may, however, help demonstrate the importance of secure …
MOUNTAINS have always enjoyed a special status. Their beauty and mysticism have inspired poets, philosophers and even fairy-tale tellers. We accept their importance as sources of minerals and water, rare plants and wildlife. But what we have never realised is the plight of mountains. Though uplands cover roughly 20 per …
"WASTE is only a resource unused," believes Satyesh Chakravarty, a former professor of resource studies at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. He maintains waste disposal has become a major urban problem simply because urban refuse is treated as waste -- and not as resource. As a result, says …
IF SO-CALLED ecological subsidies were halted in India, the true cost of paper would double immediately and the price of thermal power would soar an electrifying 60 per cent. These are the findings in a study __ the first of its kind in India -- sponsored by the Administrative Staff …
"ECONOMICS is the science of studying people's behaviour in their ordinary day-to-day life." That is how undergraduate textbooks define the subject. The book under review, however, talks about an economic revolution. But it is not clear who this revolution is being waged against. After reading the book, one learns that …
WHILE foresters and policy-makers cry themselves hoarse calling for bans and pointing accusing fingers at goats, the animals themselves go on unperturbed, secure in the fact that for the poorer sections, they are often the only means of survival. The primary accusation against goats is that of desertification, though all …
A N CHATURVEDI, former chief conservator of forests of UP and now with the Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi, is appalled at the attempts to glorify the goat. According to him, the animal should have no part in the natural environment. Goats attack the foliage of trees and bushes, …
IN a semi-arid environment, keeping goats is considerably more rational for the local people than rearing buffaloes, according to a field study done in the degraded lands of Tilonia in Rajasthan. The results of the study are quoted in the report of the task force that evaluated the impact of …
ARUNACHAL Pradesh is one of the greenest states in India. Yet today, despite having only seven persons to a square kilometre and about 8.4 million ha of rich vegetation, the state is gravely threatened by deforestation. Forest officials claim an almost 14 per cent increase in forest cover between 1980 …
Energy problems have reached alarming proportions in the Tawang and Bomdilla areas. Since the last five years, Choizm, of Khamba hamlet of Lohu basti in Tawang, has been hiring help at the rate of Rs 40 per day and paying Rs 1,000 for a truckload of firewood. She has also …
