Feature Article

Accumulating evidence shows that the planet is warming as a response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Strategies of adaptation to climate change will require quantitative projections of how altered regional patterns of temperature, precipitation and sea level could cascade to provoke local impacts such as modified water supplies, increasing risks of coastal flooding, and growing challenges to sustainability of native species.

Taking suo moto cognisance of the deaths of infants due to malnutrition in Nashik district of Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court has asked the government to design an action plan to tackle the situation.

The National Green Tribunal has suspended the environmental clearance obtained by a Belgaum-based mining company to extract iron ore from the south Maharashtra sea coast. The tribunal's order was in response to an appeal filed by the affected villagers of Tiroda in Sawantwadi block of Sindhudurg district in May 2011. The principal bench of the tribunal, comprising C V Ramalu and Devendra Kumar Agrawal, found serious procedural lapses in grant of EC by an expert Advisory Committee (EAC) of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to the company, Gogte Minerals.

Noting that the unprecedented boom in iron ore prices is generating supernormal profits, the Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, has asked the prime minister that the profits should be shared with the community as well.

Senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan and his team of lawyers spent considerable time deliberating different versions of the land acquisition drafts and comparing them.

An evaluation report on the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha by a retired forest official could not differentiate between a tiger and a hyena. The report relates to Vedanta's controversial bauxite mining bid and is one of the instances of shoddy evaluations quoted by three members of the statutory Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in their letter to environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan. The 10-page letter is filled with scathing remarks about the mode of evaluation and says large-scale approval of most ecologically damaging projects have been based on such shoddy reports.

Climate change scenarios suggest an increase in tropical ocean temperature by 1–3°C by 2099, potentially killing many coral reefs. But Arabian/Persian Gulf corals already exist in this future thermal environment predicted for most tropical reefs and survived severe bleaching in 2010, one of the hottest years on record. Exposure to 33–35°C was on average twice as long as in non-bleaching years. Gulf corals bleached after exposure to temperatures above 34°C for a total of 8 weeks of which 3 weeks were above 35°C.

In an affidavit to the Supreme Court on September 20, the Planning Commission has provisionally put the poverty line at Rs 965 per capita per month (Rs 32 per day) for urban areas and Rs 781 per capita per month (Rs 26 per capita per day) in rural areas. This has been arrived at by applying the price level in June 2011.