India would need major policy and regulatory changes including standards, taxation of pollution and tailored incentives to ensure infrastructure development follows a low carbon route. These are among the many proposals put forward in the India Infrastructure Report (IIR) 2010, released by Infrastructure Development Finance Company Limited (IDFC) on October 20, in New Delhi. Read more »
India Signs Nuclear Liability Pact
October 28, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
In a significant step which will enable it to engage in international nuclear commerce, India on Wednesday signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation, which sets parameters on a nuclear operator’s financial liability, at the IAEA in Vienna. Read more »
Women block mining traffic at Sanquelim
October 28, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
About nine women from Navelim-Sanquelim on Wednesday morning blocked mining traffic for about four hours to protest against mining pollution.
Forest Alert
October 28, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
Sep 15, 2010 From Down to Earth
Few committees have been as forthright as the N C Saxena Committee on the violation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) by the very authorities which are charged with upholding them—the state governments. In its report on the controversial project to mine for bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills, the four member-committee headed by Saxena, a member of Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Committee, has roundly taken the Orissa government to task for failing to implement the landmark FRA of 2006. Read more »
Tribals beaten out of forestland
October 28, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
Sep 30, 2010 From Down to Earth
THE forest departments of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are forcibly evicting tribals from forestland. Around 50 huts of the Korku community in Madhya Pradesh were demolished on August 29. On July 30, forest guards assaulted tribals of the Kunbi community for cultivating in forestland in Dang district in Gujarat. Read more »
Clampdown on Vedanta
October 28, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
Sep 15, 2010 from Down to Earth
The illegality of the expansion of Vedanta’s alumina refinery in Lanjigarh has turned into a core concern for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MOEF). The ministry’s stop-order came in the wake of a flurry of committee meetings as officials compiled a detailed dossier on the environmental and forest rights violations by the London Stock Exchange-listed metals firm. Read more »
Warning from Leh
October 27, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
A cloud burst over arid Himalayan town of Leh in Ladakh on August 6, pouring some 250 mm of rain in an hour. The sudden downpour triggered flash floods and mudslides, killing over 180 people and wiping out the old town of Leh and two villages. Read more »
Protest brewing in Vanxim
October 27, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
Protests against ‘mega projects’ have a habit of springing up when least expected and this has more to do with the quite and silent ways in which the Town and Country Planning Department operates. Read more »
China’s glaciers may shrink 27 percent by 2050: Report
October 27, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
The average area of glaciers in western China might shrink by 27.2 percent by 2050 because of global warming, damaging crop production and worsening droughts, according to a report released at the UN climate talks in north China’s Tianjin Municipality. Read more »
The haves, the have-nots and the dreamless dead
October 26, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa
In 2007, when the world was on the brink of financial crisis, U.S. income inequality hit its highest mark since 1928, just before the Great Depression. Economists are only beginning to study the parallels between the 1920s and the most recent decade to try to understand why both periods ended in financial disaster. Their early findings suggest inequality may not directly cause crises, but it can be a contributing factor. Coincidence? Maybe not. Read more »