Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the target date for achieving 20 per cent ethanol-blending with petrol has been advanced by five years to 2025 to cut pollution and reduce import dependence.
Environment ministry is organising various programmes at Sesaipura related to Project Cheetah.
An official said that a South African delegation will visit India in February for an assessment of the preparations at the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary.
'This is not a Sanjay Baru or Natwar Singh type of book. It's not a memoir. It's not a book to reveal conversations, real or imaginary. This is not a book to position myself at the centre of the world.' Jairam Ramesh on his stint as environment minister.
The avoidable stresses and strains in ties helped in one way. It showed for the entire region how a matured India handled diplomatic relations, especially with a smaller and suspicious neighbour, with practised dignity and patience, unruffled by provocations in word, deed and action, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
'We used to give these boxers a hammering in the ring and now they are teaching youngsters how to defend. Come on man!' 'People like Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar were among the top boxers in the world, but instead of choosing them to train young boxers they are picking people who are yes men.'
The proposals cleared by the DAC include new-generation anti-tank mines, air defence tactical control radar, heavy-weight torpedoes, medium-range maritime reconnaissance and multi-mission maritime aircraft, flight refueller aircraft and software-defined radios.
The NCM had said earlier that it had received various representations from the Jain community regarding the conversion of Jain pilgrimage site Shri Sammed Shikharji Hill into an eco-tourism hub by the Jharkhand government and the central dispensation.
Pezeshkian gained the attention of people for his stance against the crackdown on the 2009 pro-democracy protests and the violence perpetrated by the notorious morality police in 2022 after Mahsa Amini's death.
Female cheetah 'Daksha', translocated to Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park from South Africa, died on Tuesday, a forest official said.
Addressing the nation on Independence Day, the prime minister also spoke on renewable energy and the need to maintain a balance between development and the environment. Referring to the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in January 2019, Modi said, "A special campaign is being worked out to reduce pollution in 100 selected cities with a holistic approach."
A group of 91 retired bureaucrats has appealed to the Centre to withdraw the Green Credits programme, which they claimed may facilitate diversion of forest land to private entities. "Quick, smooth and easy diversion of our forest lands in favour of user agencies is apparently the sole intention of this set of Green Credits rules. "We urge the MOEFCC to recognise this danger and withdraw the Green Credits notification expeditiously," the group of former civil servants wrote in an open letter to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
According to new ministry guidelines, the permission to chop down forests will be given only after all the compensatory levies are provided
The manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of following single-use plastic, including polystyrene and expanded polystyrene, commodities shall be prohibited with effect from July 1, 2022: ear buds with plastic sticks, plastic sticks for balloons, plastic flags, candy sticks, ice-cream sticks, polystyrene (thermocol) for decoration; plates, cups, glasses, cutlery such as forks, spoons, knives, straw, trays; wrapping or packing films around sweet boxes, invitation cards, and cigarette packets, plastic or PVC banners less than 100 micron, stirrers, the notification read. The provisions will not apply to commodities made of compostable plastic, the notification said.
'We are not secessionists, we want to coexist with our countrymen but not on the terms that will strip us off our dignity and a right to peaceful existence.'
In a statement, the ministry also said several steps have been planned to support the cheetah project, including the establishment of a Cheetah Research Center with facilities for rescue, rehabilitation, capacity building, and interpretation.
Environment ministry has given its go-ahead to POSCO's planned steel plant in the country, but has asked it to spend on "social commitments", a company spokesman said, raising the project's cost by $600 million to $12.6 billion.
With land acquisition completed and infrastructure work streamlined, India's bullet train dreams are slowly, but finally, inching closer to reality.
'The larger story of systematic destruction, which can and has been quantified, goes mysteriously missing from any political and/or public discourse about the ongoing devastation in the Ghats,' notes Prem Panicker.
The Supreme Court observed on Tuesday it is more concerned about the risk factors than anything else when it comes to the conditional approval granted by the Centre for environmental release of genetically modified (GM) mustard. On October 25 last year, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Union environment ministry had approved the environmental release of transgenic mustard hybrid DMH-11 and the parental lines containing barnase, barstar and bar genes so they can be used for developing new hybrids. The apex court is hearing separate pleas by activist Aruna Rodrigues and NGO 'Gene Campaign' seeking a moratorium on the release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous bio-safety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies the results of which are made public.
The ministry of external affairs and the embassy of India in Berlin have been persistently advocating for the return of Ariha Shah to India.
Presently, the eight cheetahs at Kuno are killing a prey every three-four days and are in good health, officials said.
Some of the countries where cheetahs are still found, though in smaller numbers, include Algeria, Egypt, Niger, and Mali.
Violation of the ban will invite punitive action, including a fine or a jail term or both, detailed under Section 15 of the Environment Protection Act (EPA) and under bylaws of respective municipal corporations, they said. For effective enforcement of the ban, national and state-level control rooms have been set up and special enforcement teams formed to check illegal manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of banned SUP items, officials in the ministry said.
Pitamber Pant National Environment Fellowship (2006) and B P Pal National Environment Fellowship for Biodiversity (2006) invite applications from Indian nationals for fellowships in Research and Development.
These include Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh and Shahgarh Bulge, Bhainsrorgarh Wildlife Sanctuary and enclosure of Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan.
If required, the power ministry would challenge the Jairam Ramesh-led Environment Ministry, sources in the know said.
While the responses of the candidates were predictable, depending on which side they belonged to, an interesting point slipped through when Rahul Shewale cited the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as a scheme that would add to Mumbai's importance. No big infrastructural project in Mumbai, he said, could be successful without the Centre's nod.
The project involves development of a military-civil, dual-use airport; international container trans-shipment terminal; a gas, diesel, and solar-based power plant, and a township.
With a 50 per cent increase in the last four years, Madhya Pradesh has the maximum number (785) of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563), Uttarakhand (560), and Maharashtra (444), according to the data.
Reliance Industries has sought environment ministry approval for a $13 billion upgrade to its Jamnagar complex, including a 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery.
Nepal said it 'has received communications' from four member-states -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India -- in which they conveyed their inability to participate in the 19th SAARC summit.
The Centre on Friday told the Delhi High Court that it was willing to translate and publish the draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) in all the 22 vernacular languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
India is all set to introduce cheetahs from South Africa in a wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh by August as part of attempts to rehabilitate the species that had become extinct from the country.
Currently, major port projects have to get clearances under the Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 1991 and an environmental clearance from the central government.
The trigger that led Japan and the Philippines to ink the deal was because of the deteriorating security situation in the South China Sea. China's coast guard increased the frequency and intensity of incursions into Philippine waters, provoking the Philippines to take countermeasures to deter China, explains Dr Rajaram Panda.
A Namibian cheetah has given birth to three cubs at the Kuno National Park (KNP) in Madhya Pradesh's Sheopur district, a Union minister said on Wednesday.
Shaurya was found not walking properly by the tracking team around 11 am after which the wild animal was tranquilised and efforts were made to revive the feline, but they failed, said the statement.
The changes were made to several regulations in a coordinated manner by the environment ministry, the tribal affairs ministry and the mines ministry over a year.
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