Greenpeace in soup over Tata project

Greenpeace finds wind blown out of its campaign against Damra port project with North Orissa University accusing the NGO of doctoring its report to suit its agenda, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 3, 2007, 20:32:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Greenpeace finds wind blown out of its campaign against Damra port project with North Orissa University accusing the NGO of doctoring its report to suit its agenda.

The NGO, however, term the allegations as baseless and said a university professor SK Dutta had released the report in a media conference with Greenpeace on June 8.

“If the university allowed him to attend the conference how can it retract now? Obviously, it is because of pressure from someone,” said Ashish Fernandes, ocean campaigner of Greenpeace-India.

University’s Vice-chancellor Professor Sudarsan Nanda on Tuesday said no report as placed on the Greenpeace website has been prepared by the university.

The university had prepared the report “Rapid Bio-Diversity Assessment of Dhamra Estuary” and it was submitted to Greenpeace, he said.

On comparison between the report on Greenpeace website and the one prepared by the university, Nanda alleged that the NGO has doctored the authentic report by changing the title and its content for “motives best known to them”. Fernandes termed his statement defamatory.

Tatas plans to build a huge deep sea port at Damra to import and export steel. Greenpeace had termed the project as “ecological blunder” saying it would adversely impact rich biodiversity in the area. The NGO claim was based on the university report citing the impact on endangered olive ridley turtles.

Nanda said that the impact of Dharma Port on the environment and bio-diversity of Dhamra Estuary was not within the scope of the study.

The university also pointed out 16 instances, including portions not in the original report, where the NGO had doctored the report. The Greenpeace quoted the report to say that the port project should be stopped immediately, which Nanda says is not in the university report.

Greenpeace said it would address the issued raised by the university on Thursday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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