Category: Environment, Forest and Climate change

Campaigning organisation Jhatkaa has started an online petition, urging Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy to declare the Western Ghats as an eco-sensitive area (ESA), with the other five states agreeing to do so.

In September, it was reported that the Karnataka was not agreeing to the Centre’s draft notification to declare the ghats as an eco-sensitive area. The first notification in 2014 had made 56,825 sq km of the Western Ghats in six states — including Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu — eco-sensitive. Declaring the region as eco-sensitive prohibits activities like mining or setting up of red category industries that pollute the environment. Read more

Courtesy: The News minute

On September 27, the Parsa Open Cast Mine (OCM) in Chhattisgarh, was on the Expert Appraisal Committee’s (EAC) agenda for consideration of grant of environmental clearance. Parsa is one of 30 coal blocks in the Hasdeo Arand, an intact area of dense forest cover in central India. In 2009, the entire area was termed as a “No-Go Area” for coal mining based on a joint study conducted by the Ministry of Coal and Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC). Read more

Courtesy: The Wire