In 2023, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded a total of 399 disasters related to natural hazards. These events resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. The economic losses amounted to US$202.7 billion. The 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and the Syrian Arab Republic was the most catastrophic event …
The area under forest cover in India has been a subject of controversy and intense debate between the Forest Department anf the environmental groups and researchers. As more and more remote sensing data became available even in Forest Survey of India statistics the forest cover started shrinking considerably. This books …
How green was our earth! And how fast is 'development' robbing us of the vital forest cover .. The depletion is causing major ecological damage, often completely destroying habitats, uproating peoples and cultures. The worst hit is the tropical zone, which houses the Southern nations. Forests are giving way either …
IT IS a profoundly unhealthy world we occupy today. THE World Health Report, 1995 brought out by the World Health Organization, Geneva, reveals that about 51 million people died in 1993 worldwide: about 39 million in the developing world, about 12 million in the developed. Infectious and parasitic diseases were …
The world is heading towards a water crisis. The doubling of the world's population between 1940 and 1990 has led to a doubling in per capita use of water, from 400 to 800 cubic metres per person per annum. The result: global use of water quadrapled. Africa and West Asia …
The 1993-94 Annual Review and Assessment of the World Tropical Timber Situation reports that declining global production and imports have increased the chasm between exports and imports to over 5.8 million metres cube. Resource scarce, tropical timber exporting countries like India and Thailand have now become net importers. With Asian …
WILDLIFE conservation has made commendable progress in India. We now have a network of over 500 Protected Areas (PAS), a Wildlife Protection Act, an exclusive Wildlife Wing within the Forest Department to manage PAs, an everexpanding body of scientists and institutions dedicated to wildlife research, and scores of NGOs and …
Farmers in the developing world are in for tough times ahead. A 1994 Food and Agricultural Organization publication titled Medium- Term Prospects for Agricultural Commodities warns that the rate of trade growth for food and agricultural commodities during the '90s is likely to be less than half the rate of …
A GIANT question mark casts a shadow over Norway's whale census, Recent revelations in a confidential document from the Norwegian Computing Centre and the University of Oslo disclose errors in the software used to estimate the North Atlantic minke whale population. Norway is in favour of a resumption of whale …
Now health statistics are available at a glance. The National Atlas and Thematic Mappings Organisation (NATMO) has released a Health Map of India. This map highlights the health care facilities and medical attendance available in different parts of the country. In addition to this, the map gives a comprehensive picture …
Going by the statistics provided by this year's International Labour Organisation report on world employment, "modernise or perish" has become the mantra of progress for developing nations. This is shown in the high growth rates in East and Southeast Asia, and in economic stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. …
The energy, especially oil, consumed to transport goods and people is galloping. Almost uncontrollable urbanisation in India, especially in and around the larger cities, highlights the acute problems concerning urban movement: the increase in income levels and private vehicles, inadequate and risky public transport, and the centring of cities as …
IN RURAL areas, the use of collected biomass continues to burgeon because the availability of alternate sources of energy has increased more tardily than expected. The poorest of the rural poor are far more dependent on non-commercial sources of energy like wood, dung, and agricultural wastes than the urban poor. …
Since 1985, countries -- particularly in Latin America -- have negotiated several arrangements to reduce their crippling debt burden. They promptly ended up losing the right to decide what to do with the money saved. In lieu of debt reduction, they have, in what are called "debt for nature" swaps, …
THE Indian fertility graph mirrors the falling rate. Urban women who have 1 child less, on an average, are spearheading the fertility downslide. Women in their 40s have an average 5 children each, but childbearing women now produce at an average only 3.4 children each. While in the rest of …
By AD 2025, 4.3 billion people will be living in Asia, nearly 2.5 billion in the urban areas. Claustrophobic mayhem. There will be more people in Southeast Asia's cities scrabbling for vegetables than its villages will be able to squeeze out of a dessicated land. Crushing demographic pressures, linked with …
In India, out of a land area of 330 million ha, only cultivated. The remaining areas of forests, woodlands, grasslands, marshes, rivers, lakes and shorelines are common property resources (CPRs). (All data is based on the most comprehensive analysis of CPRs available). These commons provide rural people food, medicine, fuel …
First classified as a disease in 1981, aids still threatens the mankind, as World AIDS Day was being observed on December 1, 1994. Despite colossal funds being diverted to aids research, till now there is no cure for it. Moreover, scientists too, are not hopeful of developing a vaccine till …
Who is to blame for the world's environmental woes-the poor nations or the rich countries? The developed countries show high resource consumption patterns that make them the bigger polluters. But this is not to say that the developing nations are off the high population growth weak environmental regulations and use …
Since September this year, panchayats of Maharashtra's Nagpur region have complained that even large quantities of pesticides have had no effect on the brown aphid (delfocidas) pest rampant among their paddy fields. Their experience is shared by farmers the world over. Pests, weeds and diseases are increasingly developing genetic resistance …
Coral reefs, one of the world's most biologically diverse ecosystems, are in a steady state of decline around the world. A study by the World Conservation Union and the United Nations Environment Programme in the mid-'80s found that people have damaged or destroyed significant amounts of reefs off the coasts …
