Coastal seagrass can store more heat-trapping carbon per square mile (kilmometre) than forests can, which means these coastal plants could be part of the solution to climate change, scientists said in a new study.

Even though seagrasses occupy less than 0.2 percent of the world's oceans, they can hold up to 83,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer, a global team of researchers reported Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

That is more than twice the 30,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer a typical terrestrial forest can store.

Even as Assam has renewed its campaign to get UNESCO World Heritage Site status for Majuli, one of the largest inhabited river islands in the world, some in the state are blaming the Archaeological Survey of India for the failure of its previous attempt. UNESCO had returned Majuli’s nomination for World Heritage Site saying it was “technically incomplete”. ASI had sent only two copies of nomination dossier instead of three as required. Worse, one of them had several pages missing. The World Heritage Committee has now asked New Delhi to send its revised dossier by September 30.

Today is World Heritage Day and this is the apt occasion to deliberate upon the need for making India’s holy river, Ganga, a UNESCO world heritage site.
Many organisations have been requesting the State and Central Governments to prepare a scientific report on the basis of which the Ganga can be declared a world heritage site.

GUWAHATI, April 17 – Governor JB Patnaik today asked the authorities concerned to take urgent steps for making the Majuli Cultural Landscape Management Authority (MCLMA) fully functional. He also desired that the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) should submit the required number of copies of the island’s nomination dossier and other required information to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC) by June next. The Governor was reviewing the physical protection measures of the island and the status of its nomination dossier at a meeting held at the Raj Bhawan here.

Five prominent organisations yesterday demanded that the government scrap the proposed project of a coal-based thermal power plant at Rampal in Bagerhat as they said the plant, if built, would pose a threat to the Sundarbans.

At a press conference at the Jatiya Press Club, speakers said the decision of setting up a power plant on the periphery of the Sundarbans, a wildlife sanctuary and the lone habitat of Bengal tigers, was "suicidal".

The world's water supply is being strained by climate change and the growing food, energy and sanitary needs of a fast-growing population, according to a United Nations study that calls for a radical rethink of policies to manage competing claims.

"Freshwater is not being used sustainably," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement. "Accurate information remains disparate, and management is fragmented ... the future is increasingly uncertain and risks are set to deepen."

A task force, appointed by the steel ministry, is pitching for underground mining in the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats by citing the example of Kiruna Mines in Sweden which boasts of the largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world.

The Sunderbans, a world heritage site, is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change and government policies must take into account present and future climate impact to counter the scenario, says a study on the mangrove forests that straddle the Indian state of West Bengal as well as Bangladesh.

The study titled "Living with changing climate" has been carried out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organisation. It was released by West Bengal's Sunderbans Affairs Minister Shyamal Mandal Wednesday.

The West Bengal Government's move to extend the national grid to the Sundarbans delta for electrifying villages has come in for criticism from environmentalists.

“The land is soft and setting up large and heavy transmission poles may lead to greater erosion, and change the tidal patterns when installed in rivers and creeks,” Mr S.P. Gon Chaudhuri, former-director of West Bengal Green Energy Development Corporation Ltd, told PTI.