'It concerns the sea and the security of the nation. What has happened is a big tragedy.'
The Kerala Biodiversity Board has mooted the idea of paying salaries to farmers to make agriculture a viable option to attract a new generation of farmers. This was necessary not only to ensure food security for the country, but to strengthen farming. The government should earmark a fund and farmers should be paid salaries like government employees. The Kerala govt is trying to turn at least 20 per cent of cultivable land every year to the organic method.
'People should realise that what we are fighting for today is actually for tomorrow, for future generations.'
Poor governance and mediocre short-sighted politics are destroying the paradise that Goa was as its environment, water table, culture and way of life is drastically threatened by tourism and migration, points out Ramesh Menon.
These plantations are not only eating into the land occupied by the region's native forests, they could also disturb the ground water reserve and soil quality
Indian scientists who wrote to the PM last week are not entirely rejecting GMOs but instead asking for caution and further testing to establish their safety.
'If the Kasturirangan Committee report is implemented, the mining and quarrying lobbies will flourish... It will be disastrous for the environment... There will be water shortage, there will be pollution. Finally, farmers will have to quit the area.' Dr V S Vijayan, a member of the Gadgil Committee, points out how the Kasturirangan Committee report will hit both people living in the Western Ghats as well as the plains.
'We are rushing to 'develop' without carefully valuing natural areas.' 'With careful land use planning and scientific zonation at least 5 to 10 per cent of the country's land can be secured for tigers and other such species, and another 5 to 15 per cent kept under low-impact uses to support biodiversity that can coexist with human uses.'
The government may claim planted trees compensate for forests lost, but that does not mean complex flora and fauna destroyed have been restored, points out Himadri Ghosh.
