India-born professor Kamal Bawa has donated the entire prize money of one million Norwegian Kronor (about Rs.10 million) from the world's first major international sustainability award to the Indian organisation he founded in 1996. Bawa, distinguished professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is the 2012 winner of the Gunnerus Sustainability Award from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and letters (DKNVS).

Dawa Steven Sherpa, 28-year-old mountain guide and adventure pioneer from Nepal, has been awarded the first ever WWF International President’s Award during a special ceremony at global conservation organization WWF’s Annual Conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Madhya Pradesh has bagged the highest number of awards for tiger conservation. In the two-day meeting of the Field Directors of the Tiger Reserves (TR) that began on Wednesday various conservation issues including protection, extremist threat, phase-4 monitoring and compliance of effective management were discussed at length.

Reeling under a severe power crunch, the Tamil Nadu Government has drawn up plans to encourage energy efficient systems using solar and other forms of energy in the coming months.

The proposals include provision of subsidised solar pumps, generation-based incentive scheme for domestic solar rooftops, besides presenting awards to those who use solar power lights effectively.

NEW DELHI: Sikkim has won the 'best state' award for strengthening its panchayati raj institutions. Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and Union minister of panchayati raj and tribal development V Kishore Chandra Deo presented the 2011-12 Panchayat Empowerment & Accountability Incentive Scheme (PEAIS) award to Sikkim's rural management and development minister CB Karki on a Panchayat Raj Day function, said a statement by the state government.

Gujarat has received the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for 2010-11 for a watershed management programme in Patan district, the ancient capital of the western state.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, presented the award to Mr Ram Kumar, CEO of the Gujarat State Watershed Management Agency (GSWMA), for the initiative titled ‘Participatory Watershed Management Program’ at a function in New Delhi on Saturday, which was also observed as Civil Service Day.

A Karnataka-based NGO is one of the eight finalists for the UK-based green energy prize, the Ashden Award.

Shri Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural Development Project (SKDRDP) in Karnataka has been selected alongside seven other organisations from Peru, Indonesia, Cambodia, Africa and Afghanistan as a finalist for the Ashden Awards.

A press release said here that the finalists will compete for over £120,000 prize money. The winners will be announced in London on May 30.

New Delhi, April 17: If this doesn’t raise a national stink, little else will. Around 3.5 crore toilets are missing in India, if official statistics are not meant to be flushed down the drain. The Union rural development ministry claims its Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) has delivered more than 8.71 crore latrines to households across villages over the past decade. But household data from the population census shows that only around 5.16 crore households had latrines in 2011. (See chart)

Eram Scientific Solutions based here has won the Sankalp Award instituted by the Sankalp Forum, 2012.

The company takes home a cash prize of Rs 20 lakh for innovation in creating the ‘Delight’ e-toilet, an automated public sanitation unit for the urban areas, a company spokesman announced here.

Eram has installed 400 e-toilet units all over Kerala. Recently, two such units were installed in Kerala House in New Delhi.

Sankalp Forum is an annual platform for social and sustainable ventures initiated by the Mumbai-based advisory firm Intellecap.

The Union Ministry of Science and Technology today announced the selections for three consortia projects under the Indo-US Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC).

The JCERDC is being established under an agreement signed between the Governments of India and the United States of America which commits an amount of Rs 125 crore ($25 million) in funding over five years to institutions in India and the US for taking up collaborative research in the fields of advanced bio-fuels, energy efficiency in buildings and solar energy.