WWF-India initiative in city µCities for Forests,' a nation-wide campaign undertaken by the WWF-India to create awareness among city-dwellers and urban youth about the intrinsic link between forests and human well-being, will be launched in the city on Saturday. Thiruvananthapuram is among the 20-odd cities selected for the campaign that aims to build environmental literacy through experiential learning and empower youth to influence change. The campaign has been launched at a time when the United Nations General Assembly has declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests. According to Renjan Mathew Varghese, State Director of the WWF-India, the campaign will help to identify threats to ur ban forests and educate the citizens on such threats and help in better management of the forests by involving key deci sion-makers and stakeholders. AT MUSEUM COMPOUND The campaign will be kicked off at the Museum compound at 4 p.m. on Saturday by unveiling four large hoardings on µValues of Forests and Trees.' Interactive and participatory events like putting up cut-outs, distribution of stickers, signature campaign, crossword puzzles, and quiz on trees in history, film names/ film songs with tree names, name the State trees, trees and stars, will be held on the occasion. Volunteers, general public and school students will attend the programme. A public campaign will also be conducted along the road stretch from VJT Hall to the Secretariat to effectively reach out to the city residents. PARTICIPATION For participating in the campaign, school students can visit any nearby forest areas and upload their experiences and inputs in the form of posters, photographs, essays, songs, stories, poems, mini dramas, multimedia powerpoint shows and local-level action programmes onto the official website of the campaign that will be hosted by WWF-India. The entries from individual students and final winners will earn points to the school and the µSchool Champion of the International Year of Forests' will be announced. The prizes will be given during the conclusion of the campaign during the Wildlife Week in the first week of October. Wild Wisdom Quiz 2011, a three-day mega event which w ill bring together the exhibition of all sorts of entries and competitions, is also planned. NEW DELHI, August 17, 2011 Activists oppose BRAI Bill BRAI Bill proposes to create a new regulatory body Even as the area around Parliament was swamped by crowds of Anna Haz are's supporters, demanding a stronger Lokpal Bill on Wednesday, a small group of environmental activists staged their own demonstration against a different bill, the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, 2011. Science and Technology Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was scheduled to introduce the controversial BRAI Bill i n the Lok Sabha, but the House did not conduct regular business due to the debate held on Mr. Hazare and the government's response to his agitat ion. The BRAI Bill proposes to create a new regulatory body which its opponents claim would be a single window clearance system for genetically modified crops. ³The BRAI Bill is a blatant attempt to bulldoze through the public resistance and genuine concerns about genetically modified crops, a nd to deny state governments their constitutional authority over Agriculture and Health,´ according to Kavitha K uruganti of the Coalition for a GM-Free India. Environmemtal group Greenpeace said several of its volunteers were arrested by Delhi Police as they were attempting to u nfurl a banner just outside Parliament. The banner read: ³Don't Corrupt our Food, Stop BRAI Bill´. Activists say that since the Science and Technology Ministry's Biotechnology Department is mandated to promote the technology, it would be a conflict of interest if it was al so responsible for regulating it and ensuring biotech safety. They want the BRAI to be a monitoring body under the Ministry of Health or Environment and Forests. COMMENTS: BRAI & FDI in retail bills should be opposed as it will affect our self sustai ning nature of local business. Farmers, small businesses fundamentals will be damaged. And then our economy will be affected by western economy. from: V ikas Posted on: Aug 18, 2011 at 00:15 IST Encourage everyone to watch the documentary 'Food Inc.' to get a grip on what is the dark truth / reality behind companies that control, command and arm-twist national policies, especially around good / aggriculture / bio-technology. Watch that film to understand, why this bill opens the 'back-door' to pave way for entry of those evil giants into India, and then make sure that the corrupt Indian govt. does everything in their power to ensure that those companies stay, a nd get to do what they want to, without anybody being able to stop them. from: Sailesh Kante Posted on: Aug 23, 2011 at 12:29 IST This Bill will let the big guns in Multinational teams like the American 'M onsanto' specially which is looking at India for its big emergent market.It has already done damage to many other countries and Europe has said NO to it on many occasions.It is already in India but now it wants to be official and progress on big scale.If i t passes more farmers will end up committing suicide when they get sued for inadvertently allowing their seeds to find way in their fields. This is happening in many places. Do check out companies like this for more info. BANGALORE, August 17, 2011 Northern and central parts of Western Ghats most vulnerable to climate change N orthern and central portions are at the greatest risk, says research paper Before the turn of the century no less than 56 per cent of India's forests will be transformed under global warming, and among the most vulnerable will be the Western Ghats, says a new study publi shed in the latest edition of C urrent Science. The northern and central portions of the Western Ghats, primarily the most deciduous and evergreen forests of Karnataka, are at the greatest risk, says the research paper authored by scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). While open forests of the northern Western Ghats ³may drive up vulnerability´, the central part of the Western Ghats will experience temperature rise (projected at 3 degrees) that is disproportionately higher than the precipitation i ncrease. Much of these forests are also fragmented, putting them at greater risk of forest fires and pest attacks, it adds. However, the southern part of the Western Ghats, dominated by tropical wet evergreen forests appears to be quite resilient to the climate change. The changes in ecology could occur over decades, N.H. Ramanathan, an author of the paper, told The Hindu. ³The changes could occur through forest die-back that u ndermines the physiological functions of the forest such as pollination and regeneration,´ he said. For the study, the scientists created a digita l map of India that they divided into over 1,65,000 grids. Of these, 35,899 grids were classified as ³forest grids´, and the analysis was based on climate projections, atmospheric CO2 co ncentration and a dynamic vegetation model. It found that 30.3 per cent of the ³forested grids´ across the cou ntry are likely to undergo change by 2035, a nd 56.2 per cent by 2085. The largest concentration of ³vulnerable forested grids´ were found to be in the northern part of the Western Ghats , the Eastern Ghats, the upper Himalayan stretches and parts of Central India. Climate change is only going to add to the multiple stresses that forests witness today, including o ver-extraction, pest outbreaks, livestock grazing and forest fires, caution the authors Ranjith Gopalakrishnan, Mathangi Jayaraman, Govindasamy Bala and Ravindranath representing Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Divecha Centre for Climate Change at IISc. The high-altitude mountainous forests of the Himalayas are also highl y susceptible to the adverse effects of cli mate change. In contrast, the forests of northeast India are least vulnerable because the climate ³is predicted to get hotter and wetter there, which is conducive to the existing vegetation types.´ India must monitor the vegetation response to changing climate in the long term, the paper recommends. COMMENTS: Not only even Western Ghats but also rest of the ecological places are facing rise in temperature, everyone should realize the fact and make a move accordingly... this is the only solution left. COMMENTS: BRAI & FDI in retail bills should be opposed as it will affect our self sustai ning nature of local business. Farmers, small businesses fundamentals will be damaged. And then our economy will be affected by western economy. from: V ikas Posted on: Aug 18, 2011 at 00:15 IST Encourage everyone to watch the documentary 'Food Inc.' to get a grip on what is the dark truth / reality behind companies that control, command and arm-twist national policies, especially around good / aggriculture / bio-technology. Watch that film to understand, why this bill opens the 'back-door' to pave way for entry of those evil giants into India, and then make sure that the corrupt Indian govt. does everything in their power to ensure that those companies stay, a nd get to do what they want to, without anybody being able to stop them. from: Sailesh Kante Posted on: Aug 23, 2011 at 12:29 IST This Bill will let the big guns in Multinational teams like the American 'M onsanto' specially which is looking at India for its big emergent market.It has already done damage to many other countries and Europe has said NO to it on many occasions.It is already in India but now it wants to be official and progress on big scale.If i t passes more farmers will end up committing suicide when they get sued for inadvertently allowing their seeds to find way in their fields.