The National Biodiversity Authority has released a new set of rules to manage sharing of benefits generated through the use of biological resources. The Biological Diversity (Access to biological Resources and Knowledge Associated thereto and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits) Regulation 2025 was approved by the Central government and …
CON artists in the us have never had it so good. Now all they have to do to rob gullible citizens of their hardearned dollars is switch on their computers. There has been a deluge of financial scams all over the country ever since the high-tech electronic mail (E-mail) came …
A group of leading agricultural scientists in the country has called for the patenting of plant and animal biodiversity to be emphasised in order to ensure the introduction of an effective germplasm bank. In their paper, Genesis of farmers' prosperity and the gatt agreement, R K Patel, vice-chancellor, Rajasthan Agricultural …
The International Olympic Committee (ioc) is now ready to set the pace, not for sports, but for scientific research. It has announced the a new prize to recognise "the evolution of scientific research related to human development". The prize, sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, Parke Davis, will include a medal …
IN THE past century, humans have polluted the oceans, poisoned rivers and lakes, made deserts of good, arable land, felled forests, and severely eroded the mountainsides. This book seeks to protect the best that remains of this superb wilderness. The implications of the uses and misuses of the biological diversity …
Huge forest fires played havoc in Australia at the beginning of this year. This time they have struck again -- in western Canada. About 2,430 ha of the fruit-growing belt of British Columbia has turned into a gigantic inferno and thousands of people living in the surrounding countryside are abandoning …
IN LESS than a year from now, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) plans to put out an omnibus book on biodiversity. But Indian experts are not too sure that all "issues and views of the South" will find place in the book on Global Biodiversity Assessment (GBA). UNEP's ambitious …
MOST Ugandans living on the shores of Lake Victoria have stopped eating the fish teeming there -- their staple diet till the civil war erupted in neighbouring Rwanda and the lake became a watery grave. Upto 80 bodies an hour were found floating down the Kagera river, which flows into …
A NEW breed of gold-diggers are on the prowl. In the search for plant species yielding new medicines and better crops, rich and relatively unexplored ecosystems are now resounding to the tramp of the biodiversity prospector. But, like the stampede at John Sutter's mill, this "gene rush" could turn ecosystems …
Residents of Geneva, Switzerland, have opposed the building of 12 palaces by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. The king had received permission to build the 12 palaces and an underground car park, which are to cost about $30 million, next door to his Geneva residence. The protestors, however, say that …
THE 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity is proving to be inordinately troublesome for the Third World. At the end of a 2-week meeting on this treaty (meant to conserve animal and plant varieties) held in Nairobi this July, developing countries were hardpressed to retain the concessions they had wrestled out …
HEDGEROWS, once an essential feature of the Kerala landscape, are fast giving away to the march of barbed wire and concrete fence. After centuries of service, hedgerows have suddenly become unwanted vegetation. Owners nowadays prefer to enclose their properties with a wall or with barbed wire. The green verges disappear, …
IN THEIR eagerness to assume global environmental leadership, representatives of the Indian government committed a faux pas recently by trying to grab the chairpersonship of the World Bank-controlled Global Environmental Facility (GEF). Though the GEF is seen by some as a controlling financial mechanism for the biodiversity and climate change …
Most biographical dictionaries are inevitably born obese and tend to grow fatter with every edition. But this established reference work is comfortably lightweight, even in its 4th reincarnation. The most noticeable change from the third edition, which has been out of print for several years now, is the inclusion of …
While P V Narasimha Rao was meeting Bill Clinton to discuss "mutual" problems like intellectual property rights, the US had already reneged on the Biodiversity Convention by interpreting that GATT rules override matters related to technology transfer and intellectual property rights in the Convention. Thus, the US has not only …
The book gives an account of the major crop plants, their origin and diversification. It also deals with collection, conservation and management of crop plant genetic diversity for future use. It emphasises the dependence of adaptive change on the availability of genetic diversity, expressly for human survival in a changing …
IN THESE interdisciplinary times, biologists are equally at home with political theory. Garrett Hardin's essays, Life Boat Ethics and The Tragedy of the Commons constitute 2 of the major political manifestos of our time. James Lovelock's notion of Gaia or David Ehrenfeld's The Arrogance of Humanism question the anthropocentrism so …
THE world is a smaller place today; a Disneyland in France and Chinese heavy metal bands no longer raise eyebrows. Yet, vast differences also exist as industrialised countries continue to yoke poorer and newborn nation-states into the rhetoric of free market development and spiralling debts. Is it possible to imagine …
THE endangered lion-tailed macaque has become the mascot of the environmental agitation against the Sharavathy Tail Race Hydroelectric Project in Karnataka. Concerned about its negative impact on local biodiversity, environmentalists like Kusuma Sorab, G S Bhat, Ranganath and Mahabaleshwar have been agitating against the project ever since it was mooted. …
THE TRADE sanctions imposed by the United States on Taiwan for the latter's alleged reluctance in cracking down on trafficking in tigers and rhinoceroses is bound to further fuel the debate over use of the levers of trade as a means of enforcing environmental discipline. Predictably, the US move has …
