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
Use Eye in the Sky to Manage Forest Cover
Employ remote sensing and spatial maps to bettertrack forest degradation with sound initiatives
HARINI NAGENDRA

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 Indian organisation he founded in 1996. Bawa, distinguished professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is the 2012 winner of the Gunnerus Sustainability Award from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and letters (DKNVS).

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.

The government does. It says area under forests has been increasing for the last 13 years. M Rajshekhar finds this is the outcome of statistical jugglery and the use of flawed definitions by India’s forest bureaucracy. The bald truth is India’s forests are in serious decline, both in numbers and in health. In February, the latest instalment of a little environmental kabuki played out when the Forest Survey of India released its biennial report card of forests. It declared India’s forests were in fine fettle, with a net addition of 1,128 sq km, or 0.16%, in the last two years.

The Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (CEFIPRA) on Monday launched a multi-disciplinary Indo-French research project titled ‘Adaptation of Irrigated Agriculture to Climate Change (AICHA).’

The study aims at developing an integrated model for analysing the impact of climate change on ground water-irrigated agriculture in south India.

Quantum of plastic bags, liquor bottles has reduced

The sustained awareness campaign conducted by Agasthyamalai Community-based Conservation Centre of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) for the past ten years for ‘plastic-free tourism' has started yielding desirable results , as the total quantity of plastic waste collected from Manimuthar Dam, Manimuthar Falls and its surroundings during this ‘Pongal' holiday season has come down phenomenally.

If not kissing the frog, at least appreciating their ‘croak’ may lead to some headway in to climate research. For the first time frog song is being monitored using automated sound recorders by Indian scientists to track the impact of climate change on amphibians in the forests of southern Western Ghats. The methodology for tracking their call has recently been standardized by researchers.

Leading ecologists, wildlife biologists, conservation experts and research scholars of the country on Thursday came up with a number of workable strategies to meet conservation challenges in the northeast at the conclusion of the three-day Young Ecologists Talk and Interact (YETI), 2011, held at the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati.

Coinciding with the 41-day Mandalam season connected to Sabarimala, fishermen and clam collectors on the Vembanad Lake are engaged in a campaign to cleanse the lake of its plastic impurities.

The unfortunate phenomenon of fish, clam and other aquatic life being regularly trapped and killed in plastic waste dumped in the lake has prompted the fishermen and clam collectors, for whom the lake is their only source of livelihood, to take up the campaign.