Coastal Regulation Zone...

On January 07, 2011 the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) released Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification 2011 to replace CRZ Notification of 1991. Also for the first time, an Island Protection Zone Notification (IPZ), 2011 was released to cover Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep.

The new notification has taken into account the fact that 250 million people live in the coastal areas (roughly 25% of the population).

The Ministry of Environment and Forests had issued the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification on 19.2.1991 under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, with the aim to provide comprehensive measures for the protection and conservation of our coastal environment. However, over the last two decades the following issues emerged while implementing the 1991 Notification.The 1991 Notification stipulated uniform regulations for the entire Indian coastline which includes 5500 Km coastline of the mainland and 2000 Km of coastline of the islands of Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep. It, therefore, failed to take into account that the Indian coastline is highly diverse in terms of biodiversity, hydrodynamic conditions, demographic patterns, natural resources, geomorphological and geological feature In the 1991 Notification, no clear procedure for obtaining CRZ clearance was laid down and no time lines stipulated. Furthermore, there was no format given for the submission of clearance applications It may be noted that the 1991 Notification, also did not provide a post clearance monitoring mechanism or a clear cut enforcement mechanism to check violations.The 1991 Notification sought to regulate all developmental activities in the inter-tidal area and within 500 metres on the landward side. No concrete steps were indicated in the 1991 Notification with regard to the pollution emanating from land based activities

.The restrictive nature of the 1991 Notification caused hardships to the persons/communities living in certain ecologically sensitive coastal stretches. These included slum dwellers and other persons living in dilapidated and unsafe buildings in Mumbai, communities living in islands in the backwaters of Kerala, local communities living along the coast of Goa and other traditional coastal inhabitants The 1991 Notification has been amended almost 25 times in consideration of requests made by various State Governments, Central Ministries, NGOs etc. In addition, there are also several office orders issued by Ministry of Environment and Forests clarifying certain provisions. The frequent changes to the 1991 Notification have been consolidated in the 2011 Notification.

Habitat Destruction...

Habitat destruction is the process in which natural is rendered functionally unable to support the species present. In this process, the organisms which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing Habitat destruction by human activity mainly for the purpose of harvesting for industry production.

Clearing habitats for agriculture is the principal cause of habitat destruction. Other important causes of habitat destruction include mining, logging, and Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the most important cause of species extension worldwide. It is a process of natural environmental change that may be caused by geological processes, climate change or by human activities such as the introduction of ecosystem nutrient depletion and other human activities.

The terms "loss of habitat" and "habitat reduction" are also used in a wider sense including loss of habitat from other factors, such as water and noise pollution.

Adequate involvement of academicians and policy makers is most essential for effective and common resources in the country, Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural ceremony of the 13th biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), being held in the city on Monday, the Union minister put the spotlight on the environmental challenges facing the world (particularly in India) and the critical issues restraining authorities from implementing more effective laws to protect common property such as forests and water.

Keeping with the theme of the five-day conference (January 10-14), `Sustaining Commons: Sustaining our future', Ramesh listed out the three broad concerns involving common property: Climate change (which he categorised as a global concern), rivers and usage of water (a regional concern) and forest management (a local concern).

While he attributed the global issue to the lack of communication between academicians and authorities, he said it was the lack of scientific knowledge and skewed ideas that had turned rivers and forest management into serious concerns. "For long we have been hearing that one-third should be under forest cover. But what is the theology behind such a claim," Ramesh asked while stressing on the need to make a radical shift from the quantity of forest to the quality of forest for better management of the 75 million hectares of forest cover in India.

Besides these concerns, the Union minister said that environment issues were still missing from political discussions and the country's Environment Act had remained flawed, as it describes those dependent on forests for a livelihood as "criminals''. Referring to a recently revised law wherein the government has now involved more than one `institution' (as against only one so far) to manage the country's 7,500 km-long coastline, Ramesh said, "We need to allow for a multiplicity of institutions to be part of the process for better management of commons

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Sustainable Development

Environmental awareness creation

Environmental education must be encouraged where at first student become aware of environment. Then, they recognize or review the relationship between humans and nature. The students get knowledge and skills from the teachers to solve the environmental problems. The teachers motivate to develop the students attitudes to participated various environmental protection programs in favor of environment. The teacher and parents try to inculcate the knowledge about environment and develop positive and healthy attitude towards environment from the beginning of life. There is essential need to organize and conduct educational programmes focus on environmental issues, problems, attitude, towards preservation and conservation of environment.

Environmental Conservation

Conservation has been misunderstood by many as a moratorium on progress. This is in fact not true. Only sustainable development is permanent remedy to droughts, famines and the dwindling bio – diversity on this earth. Conservation implies an attitude and understanding that involve active management of the things(s) to be conserved. Four decades back, the words such as conservation and environment were little know. But to day one can find conservation messages in every newspapers, out side cutboard and books.

Sustainable Development

Environment belongs to each one of us and all of we have a responsibility to contribute towards its conservation and protection. When we take development, we should keep in mind two basic characteristic of development: (i) It should be sustained the benefits that were getting now from it should be assured to future generation.(ii) It should ethical. What ever the benefit a person or species should not harm other individuals or species.

The objective of development should not only be to raise the economic standard but also raise the social, economic, ethical and spiritual level of the people. Today, sustainable development has become a buzzword two key aspects for sustainable development are inter – generation equity and emphasizes that we hand over a life healthy and resources fil environment to our future generations.

Role of Media....

One of the most effective way of getting the message across to the largest possible audience in a country as vast and diverse like India is through mass media, including television and the English and vernacular press. Both these media have the potential of being extremely effective tools for environmental communication, but have not been sufficiently exploited for this purpose so far. Most environmental documentaries shown on TV today attract few viewers because of the academic or pedantic manner in which they are presented. Similarly, although many English newspapers are now carrying more and more features on environmental issues, they are usually superficially researched and poorly written. Vernacular papers still carry very little or no environmental news.

From the issues like pollution to the climate change, the media had been playing a vital role in creating awareness and raise issues to the pertaining topic of environment. The media has been pivotal in covering the entire country of India in raising environment issues like drought in Gujarat, Air pollution in Delhi, Ground water level depletion in Chennai and pollution from coal mines in Jharia, west Bengal. It is still to be confirmed that the role of mass media is one of the most important factors underlying the knowledge of environmental problems: This can only be true on the conditions that first, mass media are accessible to large proportions of the population, second, are spending some time on environmental issues and third, people are interested in information on ecological issues provided by the media so that they view or listen to the corresponding programs as well as read newspaper articles or other written publications dealing with environmental issues.

GUJRAT DROUGHT

Indians have lived with drought since time immemorial. Communities have built water-harvesting structures and learnt to treasure the value of every raindrop. All this has been done keeping in mind that it does not rain throughout the year and it may not rain next year. Therefore it would not be wrong to say that the Indian media has no sense of history. The media's reaction to the drought is the same as their reaction to a fire or a gas leak tragedy. They are treating it like a catastrophe, not as a process that needs to be managed. To begin with when other sections of society were talking about the drought as far back as October, the mainstream media woke up to it a few weeks ago, that too because water riots broke out in Gujrat at resulting in causalities. Something the media understands. Next came a flood of drought- related stories in the press. But the understanding of the crises was in the disasters mode and the issues that w3er4e raised were about disaster relief, almost as if they were talking about a cyclone or an earthquake. One nearly expected TV reporters to ask questions like what is rain, followed by what is drought and then talks about casualty figures.

But a drought is not a catastrophe. It can be managed. As part of this process communities try and anticipate the crisis. They do so by taking measures to conserve and harvest water use is regulated. Where the ecology is fragile, farmers desist from planting water-intensive crops like sugarcane and rise. More than 60 villages have proven that droughty is a myth and that this system works in the Alwar district of Rajasthan and the Jhabua district of Madhya Predesh. Even in this drought there is water for drinking and irrigation in the wells out there.

While it is good that the media has finally woken up to the drought they should try and cover it more as a process than as an event. There should be a post-drought6 coverage as well so that issues of water4 and the role of communities in managing it are kept under public scrutiny. We don't need drought relief but relief against drought.

Environmental Awareness

The rapid expansion and new breakthroughs in the arena of science and technology have taken humankind into a new age. The developments have both pros and cons. On the one hand, while technological developments have affected almost every aspect of human life, at the other, it has its devastating effect on the nature itself. Thus mankind faces double challenges from modern machines and from saving the nature, the mother earth. At this paradoxical juncture, the role of media, so to say, becomes very important and worthwhile. In this modern knowledge-society, media plays the role of facilitator of development, disseminator of information, and being an agent of change. Regarding the issue of environment awareness, media plays a vital role in spreading the true message. Along with bringing it into the hub of debates and discussions, it tries to suggest alternatives to people and policy-makers. First of all, the mere awareness also creates a genuine interest to probe into the exact matter. Thus, environment awareness is one of the important issues which media presents consciously and effectively to say a few things to the people.

The awareness on environment has shown multiplicity of results in the form different issues of livelihood rights, of displacement and rehabilitation, of sustainability, of pollution led damages and it's control etc. Thus, the all pervading media has really raised the awareness on environment among people.

To see how far media has attempted to raise the awareness, a case study is taken of the fortnightly-published magazine, from the Center for Science and Environment-'DOWN TO EARTH'. This magazine is solely committed to raise each and every issue regarding environment, nature and sustainable development. From the various issues of concern, in this paper, three important issues are raised. They are the rural regeneration, the drought in Gujrat, and the air pollution in Delhi.