Uttarakhand’s most picturesque resort Mussoorie it could literally mean a breath of fresh air. The Uttarakhand government has decided to introduce Eco Tax upon entry into the Queen of Hills with immediate effect, which is a first in the history of Mussoorie. It will be in line with the years old Naini Lake Tax charged from tourists in Nainital.
The tax — Rs 100 for heavy vehicles and Rs 30 for cars and jeeps — will be levied by the Mussoorie Municipal Board either through its employees or contracted agents from motorists at Kolhukhet, Mussoorie’s entry point. The objective of Eco Tax is to collect revenue for preserving the town’s environment, its heritage, apart from maintaining its sanitation and cleanliness. The money will be spent on encouraging plantation and educating tourists against using plastic while in Mussoorie.
BT BRINJAL-INDIA’S FIRST GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD CROP
India's biotechnology regulator Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) on Wednesday gave thumbs up Bt brinjal in the backdrop of the controversy surrounding GM crops. GEAC assessed the recommendations of a special committee that had accumulated data for over nine years to study the bio-safety of Bt brinjal. Bt brinjal is the first modified genetically modified vegetable that has been introduced to Indians.The experts, however, have raised concern over the nvironmental implications due to GM crops.
GM crops are those in which genetic material (DNA) is altered for some perceived advantage either to the producer or the consumer. Bt cotton was the first transgenic crop to be introduced in the country in 2002. Since then there has been a lot of controversy surrounding it with experts debating on its performance and impact on the environment and health of cattle. India, as a party to the Convention on Biodiversity and having ratified the Cartagena Protocol (CP), is committed to the safe handling of living modified organisms (LMOs) or genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
The Protocol provides a broad framework on biosafety especially focusing on trans-boundary movements of GMOs and also covers seeds that are meant for intentional release into the environment, as well as those GMOs that are intended for food, feed or used in food processing.
GLOSSARY
Adaptation: Adjustment in natural or human systems, in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Various types of adaptation can be distinguished, including anticipatory and reactive, autonomous and planned, public and private.
Adaptation Fund: The Adaptation Fund was established to finance concrete adaptation projects and programs in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is financed with a share of proceeds from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and receives funds from other sources.
Adaptive capacity: The ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) in order to take advantage of opportunities, moderate potential damages, or cope with the consequences.
Adaptive management: A systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of previously employed policies and practices, through an explicitly experimental approach.
Additionality: In the CDM context this refers to whether the carbon offsets generated by a project are backed up by emission reductions additional to those that otherwise would occur without the financial and technical incentive of the CDM mechanism. An activity’s emissions as they would have been in the absence of the CDM project constitute the baseline against which additionality is measured. The creation and sale of offsets from a CDM project lacking additionality may lead to an increase in emissions to the atmosphere, relative to the emissions released if the potential pur-chaser of the offset instead directly reduced their own emissions at home.
Afforestation: Planting a new forest on land that has either never or not recently been forested.
Annex I parties:
general obligations to formulate and implement national programs on mitigation and adaptation.
Anthropogenic: Directly caused by human actions. For example, burning fossil fuels to supply energy leads to anthropogenic GHG emissions, whereas natural decay of vegetation leads to non-anthropogenic emissions.
Assigned amount units (AAUs): The total volume greenhouse gases—measured in tons CO2e—that each Annex I country is allowed to emit during the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol.
Bali Action Plan: The two year plan launched at the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia to negotiate long-term cooperative action on climate change beyond 2010 and to reach an agreed outcome in Denmark in late 2009. The plan has four pillars: mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology.
Biodiversity: Biodiversity is the variety of all forms of life, including genes, populations, species, and ecosystems.
Biofuel: A fuel produced from organic matter or combustible oils produced by plants. Examples of biofuel include alcohol, black liquor from the paper-manufacturing process, wood, and soybean oil. Second-generation biofuels: Products such as ethanol and biodiesel derived from woody material by chemical or biological processes.
Cap and trade: An approach to controlling pollution emissions that combines market and regulation. An overall emissions limit (cap) is set for a specific time period and individual parties receive permits (either through grant or auction) giving them the legal right to emit pollution up to the quantity of permits they hold. Parties are free to trade emission permits, and there will be gains from trade if different parties have different marginal pollution abatement costs.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS): A process consisting of separation of CO2 from industrial and energy-related sources, transport to a storage location, and long-term isolation from the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide (CO2): A naturally occurring gas that is also a by-product of burning fossil fuels (fossil carbon deposits such as oil, gas, and coal), of burning biomass, of land-use changes, and of several industrial processes. It is the principal anthropogenic greenhouse gas that affects the Earth’s radiative balance. It is the reference gas against which other greenhouse gases are measured and therefore has a Global Warming Potential of 1.
Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): A way of expressing the quantity of a mixture of different greenhouse gases. Equal amounts of the different greenhouse gases produce different contributions to global warming; for example, an emission of methane to the atmosphere has about 20 times the warming effect as the same emission of carbon dioxide. CO2e expresses the quantity of a mixture of greenhouse gases in terms of the quantity of CO2 that would produce the same amount of warming as would the mixture of gases. Both emissions (flows) and concentrations (stocks) of greenhouse gases can be expressed in CO2e. A quantity of greenhouse gases can also be expressed in terms of its carbon equivalent, by multiplying the quantity of CO2e by 12/44.
Carbon fertilization: The enhancement of the growth of plants as a result of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration. Depending on their mechanism of photosynthesis, certain types of plants are more sensitive to changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Carbon footprint: The amount of carbon emissions associated with a particular activity or all the activities of a person or organization. The carbon footprint can be measured in many ways, and may include indirect emissions generated in the whole chain of production of inputs into an activity.
Carbon intensity: Typically, the amount of economywide emissions of carbon or CO2e per unit of GDP, that is, the carbon intensity of GDP. May also refer to the carbon emitted per dollar of gross production or dollar of value added by a given firm or sector. Also used to describe the amount of carbon emitted per unit of energy or fuels consumed, that is, the carbon intensity of energy, which depends on the energy sources, fuel mix, and efficiency of technologies. The carbon intensity of GDP is simply the product of the economywide average carbon-intensity of energy and energy-intensity of GDP. Annex I parties include the industrial countries that were members of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in 1992, plus countries with economies in transition (the EIT Parties), including the Russian Federation, the Baltic states, and several Central and Eastern European states. They have committed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Non-Annex-I parties: The group of primarily developing countries without such commitments, which instead have acknowledged
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