Greens Alliance for Conservation of Eastern Ghats (GrACE), a newly floated advocacy group, has launched an awareness campaign to save the Eastern Ghats.
GrACE initiated by Council for Revolution, a Hyderabad-based environmental action group, will organise a series of meetings by bringing NGOs, environmental and social activists, civil society groups and journalists under a common platform to build up pressure on the authorities to save the Eastern Ghats from further damage.
Eastern Ghats, home to rich flora and fauna, is under threat due to mining, population pressure, unsustainable development and wood smuggling.
The Eastern Ghats begins from West Bengal and passes through Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, touches Karnataka and ends in Tamil Nadu. It has a length f 1700 km in a north-east south-west strike in the Indian Peninsula covering an area of about 2.5 lakh sq. km.
At a press conference here on Monday, GrACE chairman and former State Information Commissioner R. Dileep Reddy said they would hold a regional conference in the city at Andhra University Platinum Jubilee Hall on November 19. Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari, Minister for Forest Satrucharla Vijayrama Raju and former Union Energy Secretary and Forum for Better Visakha convener E.A.S. Sarma will be the guest speakers.
Mr. Reddy said they were planning to hold four regional conferences and organise a mega conference at Srisailam sometime in February-March, 2012 as a prelude to finalisation of agenda. The agenda would be submitted at the UN Biodiversity Convention slated to be held at Hyderabad with participation of 102 countries.
He said besides taking up sensitisation programme, GrACE would act as a pressure group to save the Eastern Ghats.
GrACE executive members B.T. Govind Reddy, Ch. Shiva Prasad and Mohan Srinivas were present.
