How to quantify the value of having our children grow up yards from their grandparents? What we were giving up, on the other hand, was easy to measure: a Wall Street job for my husband; the opportunity cost of moving geographically far away from the centre of finance for him and magazine journalism for me.
India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has to make exactly these kinds of calculations. How to balance the value of preserving the nesting sites of endangered olive ridley turtles, which follow an ancient and instinctive ritual by coming ashore to lay eggs on the beaches of the north-eastern state of Orissa, versus the development that a US$12 billion (Dh44.07bn) steel project will bring to the state?
Five years is a long time to wait for a government clearance, but that's what it took for the South Korean steel company Posco to get a "conditional" go-ahead from the environmental ministry of India to set up its project in Orissa.
The project, which is India's largest foreign direct investment so far, encountered numerous hurdles, mostly environmental. Of the 1,620 hectares that Posco required, 1,173 are covered by pristine forest. Part of the site earmarked for a port is where endangered olive ridley turtles lay their eggs. Read the full report here.
Source: Shoba Narayan, The National.
