Order of the National Green Tribunal (Central Zone Bench, Bhopal) in the matter of Ujjwal Sharma Vs Union of India & Others dated 10/01/2025. An application was registered on the basis of a news item titled "1 Kodo poisoning behind elephant deaths in MPs Bandhavgarh All you need to know" …
UNDER the guise of concern for the environment and public health, Western governments continue to push the private agendas of large multinational interests. Experts advising international green funds and banks offer obsolete high-cost, energy-intensive technologies to developing countries, ensuring that old markets are preserved and new ones opened up. Cheaper, …
RAVINDER Kaul, chief projects manager of Sriram Refrigeration and Fertilisers Ltd (SRF), spends most of his working hours nowadays poring over official documents of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). S L Wadhwa, head of marketing in Gujarat Fluorochemicals, has put his company's products on the backburner and now concentrates …
IN INDIA, the determination and articulation of the country's stands on international issues have been the exclusive mandate of diplomats and bureaucrats. No matter how critical an issue, the people have had little say in influencing the government's position. In the '80s, and more so during the '90s, when some …
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 …
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 …
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 …
THE NEW Global Environment Facility (GEF) fund is getting bogged down by wrangles over how to distinguish between national and international benefits in environmental projects. After disagreements surfaced at a GEF-sponsored workshop in Delhi in February, GEF administrator Ian Johnson proposed setting up a special committee to thrash out the …
BETWEEN 1986 and 1990, the total consumption of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by industrialised countries dropped from 971,342 tonnes to 636,588 tonnes -- a fall of 34 per cent. The industrialised countries' halon consumption, too, has fallen from 198,609 tonnes to 151,700 tonnes. Meanwhile, the CFC consumption of developing countries, which …
After being spewed into the atmosphere for the past 30 years, mainly through the use of fire extinguishers, ozone-depleting halon concentrations are now decreasing (Nature, Vol 359 No 6394). Although halons H-1301 and H-1211 are each present in the troposphere at a concentration of two parts per trillion, the gases …
DISAPPOINTMENT among green NGOs and irritation among developing countries over the foot-dragging attitude of some developed countries characterised the week-long meeting in Copenhagen of the parties to the so-called Montreal Protocol. But alarming data presented on the state of the ozone layer, which protects life on earth from the sun's …
THE FOURTH Conference of Parties (CoP) to the Montreal Protocol, scheduled for later this month in Copenhagen, promises to be a hot affair. The government of India has prepared a detailed report on its strategy to phase out ozone-depleting substances, in which it has criticised the inequitable nature of the …
WHILE the developed world gears up to phase out ozone depleting gases by AD 2000, Mafatlal's Navin Fluorine Industries has set up India's first halon-1211 manufacturing plant, in Surat. Halons are major ozone destroyers. Under the Montreal Protocol, industrialised counti-les have agreed to phase out ozone-depleting gases completely by AD …
You won the 1991 Lok Sabha elections with a thumping majority. This must have raised local expectations. What are your future plans? While the barrage has solved the problem of water, other problems have emerged. The easy availability of water has encouraged sugarcane cultivation. Now we have too much sugarcane …
WESTERN governments have touched the panic button because of the recent evidence of ozone depletion over the Arctic and large parts of the high and middle latitudes. The ozone hole is no longer confined to the atmosphere over the South Pole. Temporary depletion of ozone over the northernmost parts of …
MukulSanwal[1] Global climate policy is being reframed, moving away from an exclusive focus on emissions, the symptoms, to the causes of the problem, use of energy, and new sustainable development architecture. The Co-chair’s Non-Paper, as the draft negotiating text,shows that divergent perspectives on how best to achieve the Objective of …
