Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Dinesh Prasad Chaurasia & Others Vs State of Bihar & Others dated 12/04/2024. The matter related to improper disposal of fly ash by the thermal power station run by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Kanti, Muzaffarpur, …
THE ozone layer over the US had thinned to unprecedented and worrisome flimsiness during 1993, say scientists who had monitored sunlight at various ground sites over the year. Between January and April of last year, ozone concentration was 12.6 per cent below normal (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1927). What …
IS THE Montreal Protocol an international treaty committed to the task of protecting the earth"s endangered -- and getting closer to the point of no return day by day -- ozone shield? Or is it a clever trap to hold the developing world captive to those who created much of …
AGENDA 12 resources to the South have been consistently falling - and there hangs the threat of a further plummet. Even the North- initiated Global Environment Facility has failed to raise the finances agreed upon. The promise by industrialised countries at the Rio summit to provide access to eco-friendly technologies …
BICKERING between the North and the South has hindered the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances in the Third World. Although 7 of the 14 members of the Ozone Fund's executive committee are from developing countries, merely 300 tonnes of such substances were phased out in the Third World last year; …
IT IS only now that the unimaginable horrors of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals are coming home to roost. Several recent studies indicate that changing climate and mutilation of the ozone layer have led to a wilder spread of infectious diseases, a lowering global cereal production and the aggravation of …
IN 1993, the seasonal ozone destruction over the polar region of the southern hemisphere started earlier than ever before -- early in August. Record low values of total ozone were registered at Antarctic stations for several days in late September. One extremity of the slightly elliptical ozone "hole" again passed …
LUFTHANSA airlines of Germany has been conferred the "Stratospheric ozone protection award" by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the US. EPA recognised the airline as the first in the world to do away with ozone-depleting chemicals used in the maintenance and overhaul of aircraft. The airline says it was …
SCIENTISTS at Hyderabad's Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) recently announced they can now produce in the laboratory HFC-134a, a hydrofluorocarbon that is seen as the best substitute for CFCs, especially in USA and Japan. With access to the multilateral fund set up under the Montreal Protocol, IICT scientists plan …
WITH THE passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the US House of Representatives and Senate, US President Bill Clinton has scored a major victory. However, to ensure approval of the agreement, which will gradually eliminate almost all trade and investment restrictions between the US, Canada and …
FORON, a firm formerly called DKK Scharfenstein based in eastern Germany, was on the brink of bankruptcy last year after reunification when Greenpeace, an international environment group, gave it orders for 10 prototypes of refrigerators that use eco-friendly chemicals as coolants. FORON turned out a prototype that uses a mixture …
The problem coolant:CFCs-To be phased out ine developing world by 2010 under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer. Deplete the Ozone Layer. Deadlines could be advanced by 4 years. The possible substitutes In favour Against Hydrochloroflurocarbons such as HCFC-22 Can only be a temporary substitute to …
INDIAN fridge manufacturers may find an alternative to chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) in a technology that is being revived in some European countries. Besides being eco-friendly, the adoption of this technology will rid Indian manufacturers of dependence on Western companies for a CFC substitute. Most substitutes on offer today for ozone-depleting CFCs, …
THE EXECUTIVE committee of the Ozone Fund -- an international fund instituted to replace ozone-depleting substances (ODS) -- has rejected India's request for a $2 billion grant to replace these substances by 2010. Northern donor countries felt India's plan lacked detailed information and also projected a ten-fold increase in ODS …
NOW THAT developing countries such as India have agreed to respect the Montreal Protocol and phase out the use of ozone-depleting substances, the North is beginning to bare its fangs -- or, more correctly, its dollars. For long, Western diplomats and negotiators have argued that the Montreal Protocol is an …
DINOSAURS went extinct because the lumbering, gormandising behemoths were unable to adapt to a changing world. The contemporary car -- a fuming, fuel guzzling, latter-day dinosaur -- probably awaits the same fate. With oil getting scarcer and air fouler, it won't be long before today's cars are veered out of …
THE EIGHTH session of the negotiating committee for a convention on climate change, held in August in Geneva, failed to agree on "joint implementation" by industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Joint implementation essentially means that industrialised countries can sponsor cheap efforts in the Third World to reduce greenhouse …
RESEARCHERS working on ozone depletion are being attacked increasingly by critics who say the fears they have aroused concerning ozone depletion due to release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all part of a politically motivated sham. One of the first such attacks was made by a Brazilian meteorologist who pointed out …
GOADED by developed countries, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) has prepared the first draft of the India Country Programme, which details the phase-out schedule of ozone depleting substances (ODS) under the Montreal Protocol. According to the programme, the switchover, which will take till 2010 to effect, will …
INDIA'S commitment to phasing out ozone-depleting substances received a fillip when scientists at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in Hyderabad developed a process to manufacture HFC-134a, an ozone-friendly refrigerant. HFC-134a will be a substitute for CFC-12, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the harmful CFCs being …
EMISSIONS of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides play a key role in the formation of acid rain and consequently, the acidification of soils. Production of nitrogen oxides leads to ozone build-up in the troposphere -- the layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth -- and, in turn, affects the …
