‘Miss Kerala’ or Denison’s barb, Puntius denisonii (Day 1865), India’s most popular freshwater fish in the international aquarium trade has finally found its way to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
The most recent version of the Red List has categorized P. denisonii as a ‘vulnerable’ (VU) species in view of its restricted range of occurrence, decline in habitat quality, number of mature individuals in the wild and declining population trend.… Continue

Koraput to be desginated as Globally Agricultural heritage system,
Bhubaneswar | Saturday, Jan 30 2010 IST

On the lines of World heritage sites, declared by the UNESCO for better conservation and preservation, the Koraput region of Orissa with full of rich bio-diversity will be soon designated as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System(GIAHS). Addressing a discussion on ''Effective Community Management Bio-diversity in era of Climate Change '', Dr Swaminathan said the Food Agriculture O… Continue

Central Empowered Committee of the SC under purview of RTI

The Supreme Court (SC) appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) that is mandated with looking into issues of forests and wildlife protection has been brought under the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) recently rejected the plea of the CEC to review an earlier decision which had declared the CEC a public authority under the RTI Act. The CEC has now been directed to facilitate the… Continue

National Biodiversity Authority has come up with a set of guidelines for the declaration of Biodiversity Heritage Sites across the country. But the existing laws limit the scope for expanding the role of local community in biodiversity conservation.

India's Biological Diversity (BD) Act came into existence in 2002 after the Parliament ratified it. Amongst other things, it put forth a framework under which access to biological resources and related knowledge could henceforth be regulated. It als… Continue

Dearth of Technical Manpower at CPCB - A serious concern

An excerpt from an interview with Dr. B. Sengupta, Member Secretary, CPCB, India.
In which he mentioned as "there is acute shortage of technical manpower, even in CPCB we have very less, for eg: in EPA of USA there are more than 18000 technical people while in entire CPCB we are hardly 150 technically qualified people. Mandates are very high but manpower is low".

Is this not a serious concern???? in a country with surplus a… Continue

The Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Act 2005 is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed in recent times. Andhra Pradesh has been at the fore front of establishing SEZs, with 56 notified SEZs - one of the highest in the country and several more such zones in various stages of approval. Amidst claims of accelerating industrialization, economic growth, employment generation and high export potential being made by the government, the primary opposition to the establishment of these S… Continue

Due to a quirk of law, the money earned from cutting trees is being used to fund the country’s ambitious afforestation programme. Madhu Sarin on how Indian forests and their inhabitants are paying a heavy price for this contradiction.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090802/spectrum/main1.htm

Washington, December 16 (ANI): A recent article in National Geographic News has made a list of the top ten environmental losses of the year 2009.
At number one is the finding that the environmental challenge of global warming has worsened.
2009 saw vast patches of the planet protected and world leaders pledge to fight global warming, but the climate continued to change dramatically, putting it in the "loss" column for the environment this year.
At number two is the finding that oceans have begun… Continue

Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice

1994 Western Literature Association Meeting
Salt Lake City, Utah--6 October 1994

The word "ecocriticism" traces back to William Rueckert's 1978 essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism" and apparently lay dormant in critical vocabulary until the 1989 Western Literature Association meeting (in Coeur d'Alene), when Cheryll Glotfelty (at the time a graduate student at Cornell, now Assistant Professor of Literature and the Environment at… Continue

11:38 IST
Lok Sabha

The Government is implementing a National Afforestation Programme for regeneration of degraded forests in the country. The National Afforestation Programme (NAP), a Centrally Sponsored Scheme is being implemented by the Ministry of Environment and Forests through a two-tier decentralized mechanism of Forest Development Agency (FDA) at Forest Division level and Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) at the village level. As on 30/10/2009, 796 FDA projects involving 35628… Continue