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 …
Living conditions remain abysmally poor in India, with a big difference between urban and rural areas. Nearly three-quarters of urban households lived in pucca houses, compared to only about a quarter in rural areas. The difference between urban and rural households with an electricity connection is about the same. Again, …
In fifty developing countries, which contain half of the total human population of the world, there is a heavy dependence on draught animals as an energy source. These animals are used for agriculture operations in 52% of cultivated areas of the world, as well as for hauling 25 million carts. …
ALTHOUGH world trade in forest products continues to be dominated by the industrialised countries, exports of forest products have come to play an important economic role in many developing countries, too. Over the last decade, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia have increased their export of forest products at a rate much …
• Since the beginning of this century, about 75 per cent of the genetic diversity among agricultural crops has been lost. • In India, agronomists predict just ten rice varieties will soon cover three-quarters of the total rice-cultivating area in place of more than 30,000 varieties. • Rice, wheat and …
FAMILY planning practices are growing rapidly, but not fast enough to make a dent in the world's population. The UN argues there is a large unmet demand for family planning services. In one generation, the proportion of married women in the developing world who are using contraception has risen to …
THE ACHIEVEMENTS are quite remarkable. But the challenge that still remains is quite daunting. During the 1980s, 20 developing countries halved their under-5 death rates -- the number of children who die before the age of 5, per 1,000 live births. In its first report on The Progress of Nations, …
"ONE OF the best investments the global community can make is in AIDS prevention," says Dr Michael H Mezon, director of the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA) of the World Health Organisation. "Money spent now on changing behaviour to slow the spread of infection will return billions of dollars of …
TOBACCO came to India in the 17th century with the Portuguese and today, the plant is grown over as much as half a million hectares in the country. India was one of the first countries in the world to report the adverse health effects of tobacco use. In 1902, the …
HOW MUCH oil would be needed to replace all the firewood used in the developing world? According to one set of calculations, just about one-twentieth of all the oil used by the world. But for women in the developing world, access to this oil would mean relief from hours of …
"TELL ME what form of transport you'll use and I'll tell you what your city will look like." This statement by an eminent urban planner sums up the deep relationship between transport modes and urban forms. Traditional cities, particularly in Asia, made multiple use of urban spaces and were planned …
EMISSIONS of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides play a key role in the formation of acid rain and consequently, the acidification of soils. Production of nitrogen oxides leads to ozone build-up in the troposphere -- the layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth -- and, in turn, affects the …
IF YOUR heart is in the wrong place, perhaps a gene is responsible for it. Researchers have recently identified a gene that plays a major role in deciding whether the internal organs in mice should be assigned to the right or left of the body and this has initiated the …
WESTERN nations are worried about increasing international migration. Says a 1992 document of Western nations, "Migration is now seen as a priority issue equal in political weight to other major global challenges such as the environment, population growth and economic imbalances between regions." The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in …
THE INDIAN National Congress -- the political party that led the country to independence -- had as its election symbol during the 1950s two bullocks, to symbolise the relationship between animal draught power and Indian farming. But now, under the impact of agricultural modernisation, that relationship is now changing. A …
IS INDIAN industry becoming more pollution-intensive? Consider the production levels of some of the most polluting industries: Gross output of the paper and paper products industry and related activities increased from Rs 450 crore in 1970-71 to Rs 4,807 crore in 1988-89; that of leather and leather and fur products …
IS THE Indian economy becoming more and more environment-intensive? The greater the use made of energy and materials by an economy to produce goods and services worth one unit of its GNP, the greater its impact will be on the environment. Available data shows economic development in India relies upon …
ACCORDING to the department of ocean development there are 40 heavily polluted areas along the Indian coast. Marine pollution problems, though localised, occur off most metropolitan cities and thickly populated coastal towns. Untreated domestic and industrial wastes are a serious problem in Bombay, Vishakhapatnam, Porbandar, Veli near Thiruvananthapuram, Tuticorin Kakinada, …
IT TAKES energy to produce energy. But different commercial fuels yield different amounts of energy per unit weight. Scientists at the National Productivity Council carried out an "Embodied Energy Analysis" of Indian fuels and found it takes as much as 3 kilocalories of combined energy from coal, diesel and fuel …
I was talking the other day," said William Rogers to the other villagers gathered around the inn fire, 'to a gentleman about the place called Louvain, what the Germans have burnt down. He said he knowed it well - used to Wait a Belgian friend there. He said the house …
DESPITE environmental pressure against the use of chemical fertilisers, world fertiliser production increased to 158 million tonnes in 1989, which is a 32 per cent increase over production in 1982. However, in some Northern countries, fertiliser output declined because of controls on Crop production imposed in the 1980s as a …
