Environment

It took the Lokayukta more than six years to pass orders based on a complaint against the illegal widening of roads inside the boundaries of the Devarayanadurga State Forest, among the oldest reserve forests of India. It was on October 16, 2007 that a complaint was lodged with the Karnataka Lokayukta against "maladministration and looting of public wealth" in the Devarayanadurga State Forest. After hearing the respondents and taking in the complainant's responses to the objections of the...

If insects are to be taken as a vital sign indicating a city's environmental health, there's not much to worry for Bangalore. That is, not yet. A recent study conducted by researchers from the Ashoka Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) has recorded a large number of insects — 2,185 insects from 10 orders, of which ants, bugs, beetles and flies were the most common. They also found 25 species of trees and 117 species of herbs and shrubs in the 50 sampled domestic...

Buzzwords often keep changing, sometimes for the better. The newest one is 'cricket for sustainable development'. To borrow a cliche, this is one with a difference. That's because this is a project that comes with an in-built campaign component. This is the Green Wicket project of the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) which seeks not only to establish it as a seal of approval for eco-friendly and resource-efficient stadia, but also promote eco-friendly practices among fans and the...

One of the common refrains that proponents of the controversial Challakere projects had been resorting to so far was that the ecologically-fragile grasslands was not a critical wildlife habitat. But now, the bluff has been called. The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has filed an affidavit with the National Green Tribunal (Southern Zone) insisting that the Amrit Mahal Kaval grassland ecosystems indeed constitute a critical habitat for the Great Indian Bustard, which it noted is...

When environmental activists had voiced their apprehensions about the adverse effects of GM crops, particularly Bt Brinjal, proponents of this so-called agricultural wonder had accused them of crying wolf. But as in the unfortunate case of the fable, the wolf was for real and so was its henous act of devouring the sheep. The fodder in this case is the indigenous matti gulla brinjal, now being precipitously pushed to the brink of extinction by the lab-generated Bt Brinjal. Activists, of course...

The dismissal of petitions seeking quashing of criminal prosecution of senior representatives of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwar (UAS), agri-biotech company Mahyco, and consultants Sathguru has paved the way for proceedings to be initiated against them in the Bt Brinjal biopiracy case wherein they have been accused of criminal conspiracy in using local brinjal varieties to develop the GM vegetable. The ruling by Justice AS Pachhapure came on Friday after an earlier high court...

It doesn't take much of hair-splitting to find faults with projects of the Karnataka government. Many of these are replete with glaring loopholes, and are often done without even token transparency. The Rs8,323 crore Yettinahole diversion project is one such. It may not qualify as a "scam", but prima facie it certainly is one. It was only after the project report was obtained under the Right to Information Act (RTI) by activist Kishore Kumar Hongadhalla that the scale of ecological devastation...

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday directed the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to respond to applications challenging diversion of 10,000 acres of Amrit Mahal Kavals grassland ecosystems to a variety of public sector and commercial projects by October 30 or face serious consequences. The South Zone bench of the NGT, based in Chennai, warned the ministry that failure to comply, by filing an appropriate response, would attract a fine of Rs1 lakh in each of the two...

The proponents of a mini-hydel project, who were asked by the authorities to halt work since the projected area of submergence had not been communicated to affected villages, have jumped the gun. The Kukke Hydro Project Pvt Ltd (KHPPL) has requested for CDM credits with the United Nations Framework for Climate Change (UNFCC), without complying with the directive of the Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited (KREDL). There were several serious issues with both the 214MW Kukke project...

It’s getting warmer and wetter up there in the Himalayas, and that may not augur well for Himalayan states where riverine disasters, like the recent Uttarakhand floods, have wreaked havoc. New research indicates that although the size of glaciers in the basins of the Indus and the Ganga will decrease in the 21st century, water discharge will, however, increase. While the results of the research predict a sombre future for Himalayan glaciers, they offer some good news for water and food security...