China's revamped Environment Protection Law could make it cheaper for polluters to clean up than mess up. By ramping up the costs of breaking the rules, it improves on what came before. Like many of China's reforms though, it leaves room for Beijing to
pick winners and losers.

Environmental damage costs China around 9 per cent of its gross national income, more than ten times the level of neighbouring Japan and South Korea, according to the World Bank's China 2030 report. That's a drain that a slowing economy can no longer ignore.

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Moving to fast-track environment clearance for hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh, an expert panel of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has shown the green light to a 1200-MW project on the Lohit river and is set to consider for clearance
a 3097-MW hydel project in Dibang Valley later this week. But in giving the go-ahead, the ministry appears to have bent its own guidelines.

Massive depletion in forest cover in the bordering regions of Faridabad seems to have forced leopards to migrate into the forests of Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. Wildlife officials confirmed that at least one male leopard is currently in the reserved
area.

Officials said four chitals were killed in the wildlife sanctuary last week— the signs pointing to a leopard-kill. Officials also said pug marks and scat of an adult male leopard were found near the kill.

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 HYDERABAD: State government's move to divert industrial effluents from the Kukatpally nala into River Musi to facilitate the emptying of Hussainsagar as part of its clean-up has come under fire from environmentalists.

The diversion, estimated to cost Rs 58.96 crore, will intercept effluents from entering Hussainsagar and instead divert them to the Kalasiguda nala, which in turn will discharge it into the Musi. 

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Fourteen years ago when Arangattil Velu Balakrishnan took to growing trees in the two barren hillocks in the vicinity of his house at Mankara, near here, his relatives and neighbours thought he was wasting his time. Once contemptuously called Madman’s
Forests, Ayyar Mala and Chudiyar Mala in Mankara grama panchayat have now emerged as the green lungs of the region which was facing rapid urbanisation. The two hillocks are the only spots of perennial green in the area. 

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