Environment

If there’s one hurdle that the proposed Ganga project will not run into, it will be water supply. Not till 2050, at least. And there’s going to be an abundance of it. The reasons, however, should be disconcerting — this will be on account of climate change. A projected increase in precipitation and glacier melt due to climate change, in fact, will result in greater runoff from rivers in High Asia until at least 2050, a paper published online in Nature Climate Change has projected. This suggests...

Tuesday last brought this rather alarming and disconcerting bit of news that global warming is threatening more deadly Everest-kind of avalanches. The scare was attributed to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). But as it turns out, it was sheer scare-mongering, and quite baseless and impetuous at that. The ICIMOD report, Glacier Status in Nepal and Decadal Change from 1980 to 2010 Based on Landsat Data, had in fact made no such assertion or...

The Union government has reconstituted Karnataka's State-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) for a period of three years. The announcement was made through an extraordinary gazette notification dated May 2, 2014. Technically, there had been no SEIAA in operation in the state for seven months — from October 1, 2013 to May 1, 2014, since the three-year term of the previous panel had expired on September 30, 2013. Projects or activities falling under Category ‘B’ in the Schedule...

BJP leader Narendra Modi had been pulling out many cards from up his sleeve in the frenetic run for the prime minister’s post. The last of the aces were pulled up in the holy city of Varanasi, where he played the Ganga card. The rhetoric was construed as a clarion call, and now all hearts are bleeding red for the river that has been polluted and damned by one and all. But like his contentious ‘Gujarat model of development’, this one needs closer scrutiny. Whether the man can indeed cleanse the...

The United Breweries Limited (UBL) brewery at Nelamangala on Tumkur Road has been running without an environment clearance, according to the findings of an official study that was meant to look at the working of the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC). United Breweries purchased the brewery from Karnataka Breweries and Distilleries Ltd (KBDL) in 2006, and affected a change in name in 2008. It is a comprehensive brewing and bottling facility, and the product is the Kingfisher brand of...

The automobile manufacturing sector in the state is in dire need of stricter regulating and monitoring. So asserts the report of an official study team that was constituted to look into the state of environmental clearances in Karnataka. The research team came to this conclusion after studying the facilities of and environmental clearances accorded to two of the largest automobile manufacturers in the state — Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts Pvt Ltd and Toyota Kirloskar Motors Pvt Ltd at Bidadi, and...

An official study that was meant to look at the way environmental clearances in Karnataka were given out in the last 10 years has turned out to be a virtual indictment of the entire process itself. There is not a single project which has got the top two grades in the rankings that were compiled by the Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI), an autonomous body established by the state government. The damning study, which was conducted by EMPRI researchers and three...

The Supreme Court’s directive to the Centre to set up a National Environmental Appraisal and Monitoring Authority and related state-level bodies is yet to take shape, but the Karnataka government has already jumped the gun. The state government has discontinued the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC). This was by order FEE 19 ENV 2013 dated February 7, 2014. Practically no one outside even knows about the decision that was carried out in a manner that is being described by critics as...

More news of the dam-scam of Karnataka still keeps trickling out. The latest to leak out from the weirs of secrecy and dubiousness is that of one single dam in Gulbarga district which is masquerading as two distinct small hydel projects (SHEPs). On paper, the 24.75 MW Mouneswar Small Hydel Project and the 24.75 MW Basavanna Hydro Project are discrete and unconnected projects on the Krishna river. The two projects have separately applied for credits under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of...

Climate change research is set to receive a boost with the Royal Norwegian Embassy giving a grant of Rs 14 crore to city-based environment research institute and think-tank, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). ATREE is also to get a Rs 5 crore corpus from philanthropist Rohini Nilekani. “The infusion of new resources will enhance ATREE’s work on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and environmental governance and policies,” said Kamal Bawa, ATREE president...