The Ministry of Environment has agreed to drop the proposal to replace the current “Coastal Regulation Zone” (CRZ) notification with a controversial "Coastal Management Zone" (CMZ) notification. Minister Jairam Ramesh conveyed this to a delegation of the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF), which met him in Delhi on July 02, 2009. The delegation took up a number of issues pertaining to India's 20 million strong traditional fishing community with Ministries of Environment and Forest, Agriculture, Labour and Home, and the ILO. The delegation also met the President of India.
Over the past decade, as the world has worked to strengthen environmental regulations and norms, India has worked to dilute them. The process began with the BJP led NDA government at the Centre setting up the Govindarajan Committee on Investment Reforms in the late 1990s which was essentially a bureacrat and technocrat led initiative.
Flowing through the Deccan Plateau, the river Cauvery is a link between the cultural past of Southern India and its present. However, the river is endangered by various industrial effluents, sewage pollutants and sand mining on a rampant scale, mainly for the benefit of major urban centers such as Bangalore, as well as by proposed developmental projects like the linking of rivers and dams on the river.
