Naturally India

A four-year-old landmark law that was supposed to bring profound changes in the lives of India’s tribal and forest-dwelling peoples has failed to deliver on that promise.

According to activists and government officials alike, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act – better known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 – has remained nothing more than ink on paper as general confusion, corruption, and an intransigent forest department ...
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The road to the world’s first tiger summit in Vladivostok later this year will have to be paved with answers about the future of tiger farms in China and other East Asian countries, said conservationists.

Pressure to place such farms on the agenda at the September summit in the Russian city stems from the estimated 5,000 domesticated tigers in China’s tiger farms, which exceed the total number of tigers living in the wild – about 3,200 – in the forests of 13 Asian countries.

"The issue ...
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The mighty Brahmaputra has wiped out nearly 4,000 square kilometres of area at a rate of 80 square kilometres per year, destroying more than 2500 villages and affecting more than five million people in Assam. Assam's Water Resources Department has identified 25 vulnerable and very severe erosion-prone sites and estimated that the Assam valley portion of the Brahmaputra has lost approximately 7.4 per cent of its land area due to river bank erosion and channel migration.

Experts from Assam and t...
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Fifty-five countries accounting for almost 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions have pledged varying goals for fighting climate change under a deadline in the ''Copenhagen Accord'', the United Nations said today.

''This represents an important invigoration of the UN climate change talks,'' Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of the national targets for curbs on emissions until 2020 submitted by January 31.

The countries, including top emitters led by China and t...
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