The first ever tree count taken up by the urban bodies will lead to the formation of a development plan for improving environment of the cities in the state. The state government officials said that a tree survey to estimate tree population in the rural areas, outside the forests of Gujarat, was done in 2003 and 2009, but no such assessment was carried out for the urban parts of the state. 

Kerala had put forth a model for other States by initiating steps to protect ecologically fragile land, A.J.T. Johnsingh, former Dean, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, has said.

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (Cept) University and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) are going to make Udaipur, Rajkot and Visakhapatnam low carbon cities.

A slow trickle of reforms won’t do. Nor can government follow a policy of ‘do no harm’ The change of guard at the finance ministry has brought in a cautious optimism among investors. In the first few days of the month, stock prices moved up and $1.3 billion of portfolio investment came into India, perhaps reflecting improved investor sentiment.

Evidences of global warming are unmistakable, according to a new report on climate change which presents a list of indicators including melting glaciers and rising sea level. The report prepared by the British Met Office and its US equivalent has provided the “greatest evidence we have ever had” that the world is warming.

An interesting sidelight to the Family Planning Summit in London last week was that it was held amidst a double-dip recession. This was symbolic because a recession of course means a slump in demand and consumption. And that neatly links up to a view that I heard from some key delegates – that the rate of population growth in developing countries must be ’stabilised’ because it is adding to carbon emissions and climate change.

Most glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and around it are rapidly melting says the latest study based on 30 years of satellite data and also actual measurements. This upturns results of a study published earlier this year based on satellite measurements over seven years which said that Tibetan glaciers are growing.

India’s agricultural research system seems well poised to tackle climate change head-on. Apart from gearing itself up for meeting the immediate challenges with the available technologies and knowledge, it is also putting in place a hi-tech, multi-disciplinary research infrastructure to provide the research-and-development backing required for combating climate extremes in the future. Some of the technical facilities being created for this purpose are unique in Asia, if not in the whole world.

Sea levels may rise much higher than previously thought, as a new study on fossil corals has found that warmer climes in the past promoted dramatic melting of polar ice. Researchers built an extensive database by compiling age and elevation data of fossil corals that live near the sea surface, using a model to factor in the physics of how changing masses of ice sheets would affect regional sea level at the various fossil coral sites, a statement from the Australian National University said.

A committee of experts will soon collate the comments received for the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) report, said Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister for Environment and Forests. The Ministry had received around 1,500 comments for the panel’s report, Ms. Natarajan told The Hindu on Sunday.