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 …
PEOPLE who live in areas prone to droughts, floods and cyclones or amidst hills and forests have developed lifestyles best suited to their natural resources, thereby enriching the biodiversity of their areas. Diversity emerges only through the human ability to combine varied and often opposing patterns of life - to …
• Half the world's 6,000 languages will die out in the next 75 to 100 years. • Harvard biologist Edward Wilson estimates that nearly 140 species become extinct very day. • The world's 250 million indigenous peoples live in about 70 countries and are marginalised wherever they are. In Bolivia, …
JOHN BURDON Sanderson Haldane, who was born November 5, 1892, is remembered today mainly for developing a quantitative theory of evolution. He was also a superb populariser of science, a strong believer in rationality and a Marxist. Exuberantly boyish in many ways, he was also kind and gentle. When Haldane …
IN GLOBAL terms, existing species are estimated at between five and 30 million. Of these, only 1.4 million have been identified, of which 750,000 are insects, 40,000 invertebrates, 250,000 plants and 360,000 pertain to the microbiota. According to some recent estimates, the number of insects alone may be as high …
ON 16 JUNE, 1980, the US Supreme Court made a historic five to four ruling, the reverberations of which are still being felt. The court held that an industrial patent could be issued to a genetically modified organism. The patent was granted to Dr Ananda Chakrabarty, an employee of the …
WHEN British Prime Minister John Major enunciated his so-called Darwin Initiative in an ostentatious announcement at the Rio Earth Summit in June, he could not have thought that his own government may not be ready to fund its sweeping provisions. Major's proposal calls for an exhaustive study of international natural …
Norway, Iceland and Japan have all faced pressures and threats of green embargoes over their demand for whaling quotas. These countries want the right to harvest whales "scientifically", particularly the minke whale, a smaller and supposedly not endangered mammal. In July 1990, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met and, under …
Opposition to US beef imports began in Europe a few years after health conscious European consumers discovered US beef was hormone treated. When this issue was raised in GATT, the US argued there was little scientific evidence to show hormone-treated meat is harmful. But the EC, prompted by politics and …
MANY varieties of crops in the higher Himalaya are rapidly disappearing, resulting in an alarming decrease in crop diversity in the Garhwal Himalaya, according to scientists at the G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development. The Garhwal Himalaya is a repository of many lesser-known and unexploited crops, but …
IF ONE were to pick a single product to represent the tremendous technological progress in the second half of this century, it would certainly be the computer. In few fields has progress been so dramatic, so sustained and so significant. Popular opinion has it that computers came to India with …
STATE-SPONSORED conservation of natural resources in India has been in existence for many centuries and has been carried out in a variety of ways. Today, the generic term of "protected areas" includes various national parks, sanctuaries and game reserves, among other areas which the state considers worthy of conservation. Himraj …
IT IS TIME the government of India set up a high-powered committee of experts to take a decision on the Narmada project. As far as the work on the project is concerned, I frankly cannot say whether the work should be stopped. It is a very technical matter and experts …
WITH THE biodiversity and climate treaties fully negotiated and ready for signature, it was obvious that the Rio conference would have had to confront the contentious issue of the forest convention proposed by the North. A last-minute insertion of fresh sentences into the text of the Agenda 21 -- the …
• SEVERAL northern governments and large northern NGOs have proposed the idea of a global forest convention or agreement. We wish to place on record our strong and total opposition to this idea. We believe this step will be anti-poor, lead to highly bureaucratic and ecologically unsound forest practices, and …
AT RIO, while the forest convention was being resisted tooth and nail by developing countries, yet another idea was being floated. This was to establish a World Commission on Forests on the lines of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). This would help broaden the scientific consensus and sort …
The forest convention got its impetus from a group of northern NGOs who have consistently pushed and prodded their governments to support this idea. The largest groups have been the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society in the US and the Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the World …
• THIS IS how the paragraph in Agenda 21 text came to Rio: "To facilitate and support the effective implementation of the non-legally binding authoritative statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests, adopted by the UNCED, and on …
RIO ESTABLISHED that the fight over biodiversity is intensely commercial. Worried about its billion-dollar biotechnology industry, the US refused to sign the biodiversity convention which, by the end of the conference, had been signed by over 150 countries. And it rejected the southern demand for a legally-binding code of conduct …
THE RECENTLY-concluded Rio conference has clearly shown that environment is now an intensely political issue with numerous contending groups of nations and peoples. The conference, known as the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), was a grand 12-day affair with over 100 heads of government present. The list was …
EVERY time an American family decides to take its car out, the resulting carbon dioxide adds to the existing stock in the atmosphere for at least a hundred years. When the polar cap cannot bear the trapped heat, it will melt and drown the distant country of Maldives or Bangladesh. …
