Damned forever
<I>Participants at the first international conference of dam affected people in Brazil vow to intensify their fight against large dams</I>
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Heading off fever
Malaria, prevalent in over 100 countries, poses a risk to some 2,700 million people across the world. Poor health infrastructure and drastic ecological changes have favoured transmission of the malaria parasite, which has developed an immunity even to les
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Looking forward to the past
Portrait of a village indifferent to the urge to move with the times
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Guidelines for development of location specific stringent standards
The existing legislation though covers adequate provision empowering the State Boards to prescribe stringent emission/ discharge standards while issuing the consent under the Water Act/Air Act, the judgments presently made by the SPCBs appear to be based on their respective experiences in qualitative terms for specifying stringent standards on a case to case basis.
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The land can teach how. to use it best
UNDER the unrelenting pressure of population growth, millions of landholdings in Asia and other parts of the developing world are small - and getting smaller. India alone has at least 33
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Newar houses designed to save farmland
The Newars of Kathmandu realised centuries ago that if they had to leave space for future generations, they would have to live as compactly as possible
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Profiting from ecological subsidies
GUJJARS are up in arms because they resent being thrown out of their homes by the proposed Rajaji National Park in Uttar Pradesh. In coastal Orissa, Chilika fisherfolk are protesting the allocation
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Amazon project: fight over funds, sovereignty and forests
IT is two years since western governments, in a fit of enthusiasm for green issues, proposed a US $1.5 billion "pilot project" to find ways to protect the world's rainforests. Meeting in
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Islands in the river
The insular but self sufficient existence of the marine nomads inhabiting the islands that pepper the Brahmaputra river as it winds across Assam illustrates how humans can adapt their lifestyle to harmonise with their surroundings. But it's a tou
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Going nowhere
The biosafety protocol is still a chimera
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Peta-friendly science syllabus from Board
Students of class VI will dissect cockroaches and catfish instead of rats, birds and toads during life science experiments. The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education decided to modify the experiments after repeated appeals from the animal rights activists, led by the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta). Peta protested that certain portions in the syllabus encouraged students to do cruel activities against animals. For instance, in order to understand the importance of air, students were asked do experiments like suffocating a guinea pig. In a similar experiment, students were asked not to give water to birds to understand the necessity of water for sustaining life. The Board has informed publishers to omit such experiments. While discussing such topics, examples of common pests like cockroaches and common air breathing fish (catfish) should be cited instead of rats, birds and toads. Mr Swapan Sarkar, Board secretary said letters in this regard have been issued to the publishers more than a month back. "The publishers have to make the necessary changes before the publication of new books for the next academic year.' Peta had approached both Mr Arjun Singh, Union human resource development minister and Mr Partha De, state school education minister to make the necessary changes in the life science syllabus over a year back. The West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education had gotten rid of dissection of toads in practical examination of class XI and XII in 2005. Instead students have to distinguish between a male and female cockroach, rohu fish and grasshopper. n SNS
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Playing it cool with climate warmings
THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Convention (IPCC) report has confirmed the basis of what many environmentalists have been posting warnings for some time: that the current global emissions of
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Root causes
Factors that contribute to Asia’s continuing environmental imbalances
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Conserving a wild myth
THE conservation agenda of India's wildlife establishment has always been held suspect by genuine environmentalists. The composition of the committee - mandated to "recommend ways and means to
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Windowdressing forestry
Applause and international funding of a forestry project greenwashes the cruel realities of the people living there
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In defence of shifting agriculture
IT HAS taken almost two decades of consistent research into the northeastern tribal practice of shifting agriculture for P S Ramakrishna, professor of ecology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, to explode the myth that the system is primitiv
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Safeguarding local wisdom
A website on indigenous knowledge
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2006: The waterloo year
<img src="image/20070115/5.jpg" align="right"> THE year 2006 will go down as environment's watershed year. This is not because this year we have had extraordinary success in environmental management; there was also no environmental disaster <i>per se</i>. This year must be remembered because the task of environmental management has come to be even more contested and even more challenged. Protests against environmental degradation have grown. But so have efforts to deny environmental concerns or to dilute regulations.
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"Urban management in India is poor"
Every year during monsoons, many towns in India experience heavy flooding. These floods some natural, others human induced result in a heavy loss of lives and property. ASESH K MAITRA, environmental planner and director, School of Planning and Archite
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Sharing the air
The rich nations are trying to frame the rules for trading in emissions. However, the methods being used to allocate these are questionable. ANIL AGARWAL and SUNITA NARAIN argue that the rights and responsibilities of both rich and poor countries must be