NITI Aayog has launched the GROW initiative, focusing on transforming India's wastelands through agroforestry. The Greening and Restoration of Wasteland with Agroforestry (GROW) report, analyses the country's environmental and sustainable land use efforts using advanced remote sensing and GIS technologies. The report offers a detailed state-wise and district-wise analysis, providing …
The present work examines the changing notion of wastelands and contested rights over it in Assam in the last 200 years. As the East India Company gradually became aware of this region, they expressed their serious interest in the wastelands. The initial intervention took place with the discovery of tea …
The objectives of this study are to incorporate the natural resources into the State accounts of Tamil Nadu. The specific objectives of the proposed study are to: develop physical accounts for land and water; develop monetary accounts wherever possible; estimate the cost of degradation of water and land resources to …
the Udaipur administration recently announced its plans to go ahead with allotment of land for jatropha plantation. The move, made under the recently notified Rajasthan Land Revenue (Allotment of waste land for bio-fuel plantation and bio-fuel based Industrial and processing unit) Rules, 2007, has sparked several protests. Under the new …
The farming system in the Uttaranchal Himalaya comprises of agricultural crops, horticulture, herb culture, the garden practices and nurseries and fruit plantation or reforestation. These practices reflect the diversity in all respects. The farming of crops is mostly traditional.
These rules may be called the Rajasthan Land Revenue (Allotment of waste land for bio-fuel plantation and bio-fuel based Industrial and processing unit)Rules, 2007. They shall extend to the whole of the State of Rajasthan. They shall come into force at once.
Biofuels derived from low-input high-diversity (LIHD) mixtures of native grassland perennials can provide more usable energy, greater greenhouse gas reductions, and less agrichemical pollution per hectare than can corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel. High-diversity grasslands had increasingly higher bioenergy yields that were 238% greater than monoculture yields after a …
Despite the recent emphasis on industrial growth, building up the country's natural resource base remains the most potent counter to rural poverty. In fact, a number of social scientists and activists
On 17 May 2005, the Government of Gujarat issued a resolution (GR) to bring wastelands under cultivation inviting big corporate houses and rich farmers – a beginning of corporate farming in a big way in the state. The GR has the provision of giving wastelands up to 2000 acres for …
The distribution trends of trace elements over North and South Krishna delta were examined in relation to fresh-, brackish- and saline-water zonations. Strontium and boron have shown significant variations in fresh-, brackish- and saline-water environment. Strontium has shown a variation from 23 to 1500 mg/l in freshwater, 1650 to 2760 …
an ecological disaster is waiting to unfold in the coastal belt of Saurashtra in Gujarat. Rampant illegal mining of building stone is wreaking havoc on the region's biodiversity. It has also resulted in severe groundwater depletion, apart from impacting the quality of water. Agriculture, too, is a major casualty. What …
In Birahrua, Morena district, Madhya Pradesh, ravines are everywhere. They have swallowed up fields and are now ravaging hutments. Habitats are turning into devilish gullies. For Babulal Kewat, one resident of this village, this means another hunt for a refuge. Babulal and his family of eight are eternally on the …
the Union ministry of environment and forests (mo ef) has taken strong exception to Himachal Pradesh's (hp) decision to denotify a part of its forestland. Under a notification issued in 1952, hp declared all wasteland and tracts on which the state government had proprietary rights as protected areas. However, in …
smokescreen: Two persons were charred to death and 25 injured in a major fire at pharmaceutical giant Ranbaxy's factory in Mohali, Punjab, on June 11. The blaze was preceded by blasts at the production centre. Though the plant uses highly inflammable chemicals, Punjab chief minister (CM) Amarinder Singh curiously exonerated …
The Center proposes to consolidate all watershed programmes under a single ministry. The aim of the new programme, called Hariyali, is to streamline work and avoid duplication. "I am totally in favour of the move,' says N C Saxena, former secretary, planning commission. At present, three ministries run programmes related …
In the face of mounting protests against the Comprehensive Wasteland Development Project (cwdp), the characteristically intractable chief minister (cm) of Tamil Nadu (tn), J Jayalalithaa, has been forced to climb down partially. The state government's ambitious programme has been in the eye of a storm ever since it was conceived …
For the last three decades, the villagers of Karauli district in Rajasthan had grown accustomed to listening to the blasts of mines. And worse, to having their fields rendered useless for cultivation. With illegal miners clearing large tracts of land, and using dynamites for creating quarries, agriculture is no longer …
a stretch of barren hilly land is called changar in Himachal Pradesh. Since it lacks irrigation, agriculture on changar is difficult. About 427 sq km land in the basin of the river Beas in Kangra district is changar . It is spread over 99 pancha yats and 570 villages where, …