The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Why has the csd failed to produce results? It will be unfair on my part to pass judgement as I have attended only one session of the csd . However, one reason could be the way csd has functioned till now. The chairperson of csd , elected at the beginning …
Poor environmental conditions would increase human health risks, warns a study jointly conducted by the World Resource Institute (WRI), the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank. The WRI 1998-99 report, titled 'Environmental Change and Human Health', says that despite vast improvements in human …
The Commission on Sustainable Deve--lopment ( csd) meets every year in New York in April to take stock of the world's progress towards sustainable development. Discus-sions centre around a few select chapters of Agenda 21, the global action plan chalked out in Rio. The last csd (see Special Report: How …
for an environmentalist with an interest in water, this is the time to be on a water circuit. When the governments of the world met in June 1997 to discuss the progress made in the five years after the Rio conference, they decided that the 1998 meeting of the Commission …
The national forest policies of 1952 and 1988 stated that one-third of India"s land should be under forest cover. But it is much less than that. Is your government taking any steps to change this? Forest policies must change. In recent years, the weaknesses of these policies have become obvious. …
The Indian delegation to the CSD has endorsed the alternative G-77 proposals and almost agreed to a legally binding global treaty on forests. The government's stand is reflected in a statement made to Centre for Science and Environment, by the Indian Spokes person in the delegation, Nirmal Andrews, Joint Secretary, …
Nearly three years after the June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, progress in implementing Agenda 21 is mixed at best.While the post-Rio period has been marked by unfulfilled promises on many fronts and continued conflict between developed and developing countries, the third …
IT'S a bit less than a conspiracy, a bit more than a fetish. Five international organisations have made forest conservation their overriding priority. The gigantic United Nations bureaucracy based in New York, Washington, Tokyo and Rome is breathing in carbon dioxide, breathing out oxygen. First came the International Tropical Timber …
How would you define and explain the mandate of the President's Commission on Sustainable Development? Well, I think the Commission sustains on a mandate rooted in relationship between business and environmental NGOs in America. Both are now inclined to identify areas in which certain common programmes can be explored. This …
THE Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) will focus on strengthening the involvement of non-governmental organisations to ensure the implementation of Agenda 21. "We have to move beyond the classical notion of development -- of donor-recipient relationships -- into something where instead of compensations there are obligations arising from a joint …
IT WAS absurd of Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), to have billed last year's conference, popularly known as the Earth Summit, as "the last chance to save the world". Part of his motivation was to hype up the event so that the world's …
EVERYONE agrees that the greatest achievement of the world's largest-ever environment conference -- at Rio last year -- was the establishment of the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) to monitor environmental degradation. But how effective the 53-member CSD, scheduled to hold its first meeting on June 14, will be is …
World leaders attending Rio+20 did nothing to tackle the interlinked crises of economy and ecology, says Sunita Narain after attending the second Earth Summit at Rio. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, came to an end last week. The conference declaration, titled “The Future We Want”, is …
