Kerala will soon revamp its environment policy, three years after formulating it, to include climate change aspects in the document.

The Department of Environment has initiated a consultation process with various stakeholder agencies in this regard. The views of around 20 departments and research organisations have been sought to enrich the policy document that was published in 2009. The policy of the State was framed before the formation of the Department of Environment and Climate Change. The document had not covered climate change aspects.

Panel names erring government agencies

Government agencies, including the Forest Department, Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) and the police, are contributing to the pollution and environmental degradation of the Pampa river by releasing untreated waste into the river system.

The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will take a decision on including the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site soon. The committee is expected to announce the decision at its session to be held at Saint Petersburg in Russia in June.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will submit its recommendations on the mountain ranges, a biodiversity hotspot, to the committee by mid-April.

With the presence of 1,168 bird species recorded in the country, India has been ranked 9th in the global list of bird wealth.

While a majority of Indian species belonged to the Least Concerned category indicating that they were relatively safe from threats, the country was ranked 6th in terms of globally threatened species.

Kerala has termed some recommendations of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) draconian.

In its response to the suggestions of the panel, the State came down heavily on the proposal to decommission dams older than 50 years. “Such a step will leave the State without power in a few years,” said a report signed by James Varghese, Principal Secretary to the Kerala Government

Illegal fishing practices are posing serious threat to fish resources and aquatic biodiversity. Creation of artificial substrata, use of dynamites in shallow parts of seas and fishing during high tides in backwaters have been reported in the State, though such activities have been banned by law.

Officials of the Fisheries Department had recently confiscated huge bundles of bamboo shoots from some fishing groups in Kochi, which were intended to create “paru” or artificial substrata, said E.G. George Kutty, deputy director of Fisheries, Ernakulam.

The Kerala government has rejected the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) proposals and urged the Union government to “do away with the Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA).”

The State has requested the Union government not to “burden it with another regulatory authority, seriously diminishing the scanty land area of the land-starved State having very high density of population.”

Status of the bird may be changed from ‘least concern' to ‘near-threatened or vulnerable'

The conversation status of river tern, a bird species found mostly in inland waterbodies, is being reviewed by BirdLife International (BI), which assesses the conservation status of birds for the Red List of the Globally Threatened Birds for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) has recommended to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest to provisionally notify the limits of Ecologically Sensitive Zones. It suggested that the final delimitation be carried out with extensive inputs from local communities and local bodies.

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel has proposed a three-layer system — comprising the (WGEA) Western Ghats Ecology Authority (as the apex body), the State authorities and the district ecology committees — to address the environmental challenges of the Western Ghats.

The Madhav Gadgil-led expert panel has proposed that the 24-member WGEA deal with the “myriad environmental implications in the Western Ghats.”