‘Stakeholders, State Govts Should Together Protect All Ramser Sites’

Thiruvananthapuram: Various stakeholders and state governments should come together to protect all Ramser-recognized wetland sites in the country, Infosys CEO Shibulal said. He was speaking at the first national seminar on Ramsar sites and wetland conservation in Alappuzha. India has 26 designated Ramsar sites and wetlands of international importance, with a total surface area of 6,89,131 hectares. While Kashmir, with four sites, tops the number of Ramsar sites in the country, Kerala, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh have three such sites each.

Certain section of population seeks relaxation of ban on tourism; specialists are against any dilution of the scheme

The Tamil Nadu Government’s latest notifications on demarcation of core and buffer zones of three tiger reserves in the State may still require a fine-tuning to strike a balance among ecology protection, tribal welfare and tourism promotion, feel conservationists and wildlife experts. As the demand for relaxation of the ban on tourism becomes shriller in the reserve areas, the specialists are against any dilution of the scheme spelt out in the notifications.

Certain section of population seeks relaxation of ban on tourism; specialists are against any dilution of the scheme

The government’s latest notifications on the demarcation of core and buffer zones of three tiger reserves in the State may still require a fine-tuning to strike a balance among ecology protection, tribal welfare and tourism promotion, feel conservationists and wildlife experts. As the demand for relaxation of the ban on tourism becomes shriller from certain section of the local population in the reserve areas, the specialists are against any dilution of the scheme spelt out in the notifications.

At a time when crores are being spent on tiger conservation, forests would be cut down at Mahan in Central India following provisional clearance for coal mining by the Government.

Kamaljith Singh Bawa, founder and president of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), and winner of this year’s Gunnerus Sustainability Award (a Norwegian research prize awarded biannually), said the heritage status granted to the Western Ghats pointed to the importance of conservation and management of our natural resources.

The civil society should be deeply involved in such efforts so that conflicts or future conflicts could be avoided, he added.

With environmental activists criticising that the UNESCO World Heritage Site tag on 39 areas in the Western Ghats does not mean more protection to these ecologically fragile properties, Environment

FOREST WEALTH: The policy process to arrest forest degradation needs to be modernised with up-to-date techniques and civil society participation that is timely and proactive

India-born professor Kamal Bawa has donated the entire prize money of one million Norwegian Kronor (about Rs.10 million) from the world's first major international sustainability award to the India

A study conducted by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), a Bangalore-based non-governmental organisation, in association with the Lake Protection Forum, an organisation of fishermen, over the first three months of this year on the Vembanad lake has shown that the level of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) has increased and the level of dissolved oxygen has decreased over these three months.