SOME MORE NEWS BASED TIT BITS WHICH MAY HELP YOU IN MAINS 2011.

1.Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), also known as Payments for Environmental Services (or Benefits) broadly defined, is the practice of offering incentives to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service. These programmes promote the conservation of natural resources in the marketplace. 2.Foreign Minister of Nigeria visited India from 15 to 17 March 2011 to participate in the Fifth session of the India-Nigeria Joint Commission which took place on 16 March 2011. The Fifth Session of the Joint Commission was expected to review bilateral developments and chalk out strategies for facilitating future expansion of bilateral ties. 3.Indian-American Mitul Desai, an expert in international finance law was in July 2011 appointed as Senior Adviser in the U.S. State Department's South and Central Asia Bureau to cement ties with the Diaspora groups. Mitul will be responsible for figuring out ways to enable the US government to put together a coalition and an alliance of groups to make it easier for Indians in the Diaspora as well as other Diaspora communities to make contributions to development. 4.Kenyan environmentalist & Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai died on 25 September 2011 in Nairobi. The first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai had began a movement to reforest her country by paying poor women a few shillings to plant trees. The Green Belt Movement organization founded by her in 1977 mentioned that she had been treated for ovarian cancer in the past year. 5.Chinas first space lab module Tiangong-1 blasted off recently. The unmanned module, carried by Long March-2FT1 rocket, will test space docking with a spacecraft later this year, paving the way for China to become the third country in the world to operate a permanent space station around 2020. The Tiangong-1 will orbit the Earth for about one month to await Shenzhou-8 unmanned spacecraft. Once the two vehicles successfully rendezvour, they will conduct the first space docking at a height of 340 km above Earth surface. 6.Fracking involves water, chemicals and sand being injected into rock formations to break them open in order to extract previously unobtainable fossil fuels. If fracking releases the chemicals they say it does (arsenic, vanadium) then the groundwater aquifers so critical to the lean season flow would basically be feeding poisonous and contaminated waters, which will wreak havoc on the fragile ecosystem.

So far Indias relentless efforts during the last 25 years to build pipelines to bring gas from Turkmenistan, Iran, Qatar, Bangladesh and Myanmar have remained pipe dreams. Renewable energy sources like ethanol and bio diesel, wind and solar are high on the national agenda. Thanks to Indo-US nuclear pact, India may succeed in increasing the contribution of nuclear energy. But a recent phenomenon of shale gas which has brought about seismic changes in the natural gas scene in India. 7. Shale gas is natural gas produced from shale formations. Gas shales are organic-rich shale formations. In terms of its chemical makeup, shale gas is typically a dry gas primarily composed of methane. As per the available data and studies undertaken, India has huge shale gas potential. Six basins, namely Cambay, Assam-Arakan, Gondawana, KG

onshore, Cauvery onshore and Indo Gangatic basins, have been identified. The government should encourage Indian companies public sector and private sector to import gas shale production technology by giving incentives. It may even facilitate such transfer of technology through signing of cooperation pact with the US government as China has done during the recent visit of President Obama. The government should consider setting a shale gas mission to make efforts to develop Indias shale gas reserves on a war footing. In short, we should actively endeavour to develop shale gas reserves in India in the shortest time with all the human, geologic and financial resources we can assemble.

8. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in its 62th Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) meeting issued a strong directive to reduce the quantity of sulphur and nitrogen oxide used in fuel for tanker vessels. This directive comes after observation of the steady and continuous rise in the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) in the regularly used oceanic routes of the Caribbean and the Baltic Sea. These norms are expected to be laid on those ships with GWT (Gross Weight Tonnage) of 400 tonnes and above. Through the issuance of such a stringent norm, the IMO has issued a

mandate of the incorporation of the EEDI (Energy Efficiency Design Index) for the newer and prospective vessels. In addition to the EEDI, the maritime organisation has also laid compulsory stipulations about the incorporation of SEEMP (Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan). At present, the prescribed limit for sulphur oxide is 4.5% which, following the applicability of the directive starting from January 2012, is required to be curtailed to about 3.5%. Over the next two decades, this limit will be further curtailed to about 0.5% after a detailed surveying in the year 2018.

Alternatively, in those oceanic areas known as Emission Control Areas (ECAs) where limitations to these poisonous oxides have been already imposed, the restrictions have been further curtailed to 1% from the previously existing 1.5%. The restrictions in these areas have been made effective from July 2010. Also, the newly amended restrictions of fuel content in these areas will be further limited to 0.10% by the 2015. The areas that come under the IMOs ECA norm at present are the North and the Baltic Sea. However, by the year 2014, the ECA norms will extend and include the Caribbean oceanic area of the United States and the North American oceanic network in its entirety.

While European and American shipping companies have not encountered any serious problems trying to curtail the sulphur oxide content in fuels following the issuance of the emission control directive, Indian shipping companies are facing a deeper financial impact. An authority of the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), quotes an expenditure of nearly one billion rupees per vessel to carry out the conversion of fuel to the newly expected ones on Indian vessels.

9. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesizes that the relationship between per capita income and the use of natural resources and/or the emission of wastes has an inverted U-shape. According to this specification, at relatively low levels of income the use of natural resources and/or the emission of wastes increase with income. Beyond some turning point, the use of the natural resources and/or the emission of wastes decline with income. Reasons for this inverted U-shaped relationship are hypothesized to include income-driven changes in: (1) the composition of production and/or consumption; (2) the preference for environmental quality; (3) institutions that are needed to internalize externalities; and/or (4) increasing returns to scale associated with pollution abatement. The term EKC is based on its similarity to the time-series pattern of income inequality described by Simon Kuznets in 1955. A 1992 World Bank Development Report made the notion of an EKC popular by suggesting that environmental degradation can be slowed by policies that protect the environment and promote economic development. Subsequent statistical analysis, however, showed that while the relationship may hold in a few cases, it could not be generalized across a wide range of resources and pollutants.

10.

An international study that investigated the lung functions of healthy, non-smoking

adults from 17 countries has found that the efficiency of breathing of South Asians, mainly Indians, is 30 per cent lower than that of Europeans and North Americans. Poor lung functions observed in Indians serve as a grim reminder of Indias colossal task of cleaning the air that hangs outdoors over most Indian cities and indoors at rural and urban homes. The study did not look into exposure to air pollutants. So the effects of maternal and child nutrition, which can also influence lung health, cannot be ruled out yet. This new research that has stirred speculation that the health effects of air pollution in India may be worse than hitherto suspected.

11.

Nuclear Safety Review Committee (NSRC) headed by S K Sharma has proposed setting

up an emergency facility at each of the nuclear reactor sites as one of the measures. The facility would comprise of a separate building with provisions for continuous communication, feeding, rest room for engineers and others who are on emergency duty, he said. Another suggestion of the Committee includes a provision for setting up additional aircooling generators and portable generators to overcome station blackout in case of an accident like that of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants in Japan, which were hit severely by a major earthquake followed by an unprecedented tsunami on March 11 this year. According to the committee, unlike in the Fukushima case, the simultaneous occurrence of a strong earthquake and a tsunami at Indian nuclear power plants was not foreseen as the submarine faults capable of generating tsunamis are located at very large distances of more than 800 km from the western coast and more than 1,300 km on the eastern coast.

12.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has hit the bull's eye in its findings on the

Tea Board. Dwelling on the Role of the Tea Board in tea development in India, the CAG has found the board ineffective in exercising its role, be it as a regulator or in research, marketing and promotion. The findings come at a time when exports from the country are down nearly 18 per cent in the first half, despite a 3 per cent drop in global production. The lack of efficiency in the functioning of the Board has led to a situation wherein Indian tea is realising lower prices in the global market than its competitors. This is primarily because of the inferior quality of Indian tea and the adverse price mix. In terms of volume, too, the production of orthodox tea has not increased. In fact, it has dropped below the target levels set by the Government. One of the key findings of the report is the failure of the Board to stipulate an increase in the production of orthodox tea as a condition for eligibility of subsidy. Unfortunately, in what could amount to a scandal, the Tea Board has been found to have extended subsidy to units that have not submitted proper documents, and without proper verification of factory records.

13.

The Board has also been pulled up for repeatedly ignoring small tea-growers. The CAG

has found 80 per cent of small growers still outside the ambit of regulation. Though the Board has been talking of a separate set-up for the small growers for over a year now, no progress seems to have been made. More worrying is the audit body's finding of declining productivity, with a substantial increase in the commercially unproductive area. The only way out that it sees is a replantation/rejuvenation programme. But the target set for such a programme is, according to the CAG, abysmal and it will take nearly 150 years to clear the backlog in replanting! The Tea Board is also lagging in fixing targets for its subsidy schemes. Most importantly, it has not laid down any mechanism to measure the impact of various development schemes. Nor has it conducted regular studies to identify components that can reduce production costs, which are among the highest in the major tea-producing countries. Clearly, the institutional role of the Board as a facilitator of the industry's interests in production and trade, in the post-reform environment, has been found wanting.

14.

The Government of India introduced a new category of workers called International

Workers' (IWs) in the Employee Provident Fund Scheme, 1952 (EPF Scheme) in October 2008. IWs include expatriates (foreign citizens) working for an employer in India, and the Indian employees working overseas in countries with which India has signed a Social Security Agreement (SSA).