EQ: Ganga Pollution, Deep Sea, Arctic Death Spiral and More

EQ: Your weekly environment quotient.

E-India

• “Loss of biodiversity”: A NGT appointed expert panel has strongly criticised Art of Living for causing extensive damage to the fragile Yamuna floodplains in their March event. The panel noted that some areas of the floodplain had been “completely destroyed”.
  

• Biodiversity Act ineffective? Even fourteen years after India enacted her biodiversity law, an RTI enquiry has revealed that only 3 percent of the required People’s Biodiversity Registers have been prepared.
  

• Save our elephants: In a month where we celebrated World Elephant Day, take a look at some of the biggest threats facing these beautiful animals.
  

E-Pollution

• Zero tolerance for tannery pollution: As pollution levels in the Ganga continue to rise, the environment minister has announced “zero tolerance” for tannery waste discharge into the river.
  

E-Movie

• Green Movie festival in Kolkata: The city is set to host the second edition of its International Environment and Wildlife Movie festival this December — over 600 movies are to be screened in addition to a host of other green initiatives.
  

E-Food

• Could meal supplements ever replace “real” food? A new article questions whether we can ever engineer a replacement for food that truly reflects its nutritional, cultural and emotional impact on our lives.
  

E-Law

• Big diesel cars return: Months after a ban on registering new diesel cars, the Supreme Court has allowed these cars to re-enter Delhi’s roads after paying a 1 percent cess.
  

E-Stat

• 0.0001: The percentage of deep ocean that has been explored
  

E-International

• Arctic ice “Death Spiral”: Arctic ice is vanishing by 13 percent every decade and scientists are predicting that the entire summer ice cover may collapse in the coming years.
  

E-Nature

• What’s killing our bees? A new study has revealed that a common class of insecticides called neonicotinoids is causing a mass decline in bee populations. This is worrying since bees are responsible for pollinating many of the plant species that we depend on for our daily existence.
  

E-Video

• Take a look at the deep sea paradise in Bermuda’s waters here:
  

E-Quiz

• Which of the following countries is home to Europe’s first vegetarian city?
  (a) France (b) Italy (c) Spain (d) Portugal
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(Shalini Iyengar is a lawyer and Research Associate at the International University College of Turin)