Malaysia, the word's No.2 palm oil producer, will come up with a certification scheme to ensure the tropical oil is grown without clearing forests and destroying wildlife, a newspaper reported on Monday.

The Business Times quoted Commodities Minister Bernard Dompok as saying the Southeast Asian country had to act on its own, signaling it was responding to growing scrutiny by green groups and activists.

"This is at a preliminary stage," Dompok said during a working visit to promote Malaysian commodities in Australia.

Manufacturers of products that claim to be environmentally friendly will face tighter rules on how they are advertised to consumers under changes proposed Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission.

The commission

The state government has been sitting on a proposal that would allow the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to rate buildings according to whether they follow green norms. The BMC had planned to introduce the rating system for residential, commercial, government and other projects from this April.

Mumbai: After years of haphazard development that has turned much of the city into an eyesore for greens, developers are now looking at getting an environmentally friendly tag for their projects.

Kirtika Suneja / New Delhi May 14, 2010, 0:20 IST

The government

An advocate of natural farming methods for more than a decade, Kanchipuram-based Gandhi Gopalakrishnan was shocked to see lush mango farmland turning infertile by the dumping of rice husk ash (RHA). "The farmers are deceived by claims that RHA helps the fertility of the soil, when the contrary is true," he says.