This brochure offers decision-makers in the real estate and energy industries, as well as urban and municipal developers, a broad overview of the topics of decentralised energy generation and supply, and raises awareness of the goal of decarbonisation by 2050 at the latest. The advancing digitalization in the construction and …
THE EXPERIENCE of Kudumbam, a voluntary organisation based in Tamil Nadu's Pudukottai district, shows organic farming is more readily accepted by villagers when propagated by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) than by individual farmers. Kudumbam disseminates knowledge on organic farming through its Tamil monthly, Pasuthalir. With the help of the local …
Inhabitants of the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR) in Rajasthan are to be moved once again. The STR authorities have decided to relocate 20 villages inside the sanctuary to sites outside it because, they contend, the villagers are taking a heavy toll of the reserve forest, which is made up chiefly …
Developed countries are insisting on greening GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) to minimise environmental degradation that could be caused by unshackled international trade in the post-Uruguay Round era. But this may result in barriers to trade with developing countries and also bring about a new range of protectionist …
Person 1: These international meetings get tiring, don't they? Person 2: Well, more tiresome than tiring. Person 1: Anyway, I think it's good that we are finally beginning to recognise environmental problems at the international level. My name is Donna Dogood. I used to work with the US Environmental Protection …
EVER SINCE the Earth Summit last year in Rio de Janeiro, there has been a spate of literature on sustainable development. Suddenly there is money aplenty for seminars, conferences and publications on every aspect of the subject. Suddenly corporations, multilateral agencies and even governments are anxious to fund research or …
THE FUNDAMENTAL theme of organic farming or natural farming is its ecological approach: It makes maximum possible use of organic wastes, originating from the farm, to keep up soil fertility. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), which has 360 member organisations in more than 65 countries, unites their …
The proposed National Environment Tribunal bill has sparked off a debate in legal, environmental and industrial circles. The bill, expected to be tabled by the government in the forthcoming winter session of Parliament, proposes a national tribunal devoted to environmental matters and the settlement of compensation for accidents. It has, …
IT IS THE season of the kerempt or "big rains", and the sky is often overcast. Four hours south of Addis Ababa, with the rain turning the roads into swamps, it is a different world. The sense of helplessness, the sense of waiting, the dependence on nature -- it's there …
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that do not help in the government's family planning programmes may get debarred from receiving government funds. Since the beginning of October, the government has made it mandatory for NGOs that draw government funds to promote family planning. The decision came in the wake of an unequivocal …
"IF TISSUE culture companies can make profits, why can't villagers?" asks C R Raju, who has developed a tissue culture technique that he claims is cheap and easily transferable to the people -- a feat research laboratories are still to achieve. Raju developed the low-cost technique as part of voluntary …
THE EIGHTH session of the negotiating committee for a convention on climate change, held in August in Geneva, failed to agree on "joint implementation" by industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Joint implementation essentially means that industrialised countries can sponsor cheap efforts in the Third World to reduce greenhouse …
MORE THAN 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from across the world met recently in the sub-Saharan city of Bamako as a prelude to the intergovernmental convention on desertification, which was proposed by African countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. When the industrialised countries did not show much interest …
• Denmark's fourth-largest city, Alborg, has groundwater so pure it can be pumped directly into homes. But the supply from the Drastrup underground reserve is threatened by contamination and local officials are trying to solve this problem by encouraging users of the land to change their ways. Drastrup authorities did …
THERE is no environmental problem in the world that affects poor people as extensively or viciously as land degradation or desertification. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), about 900 million people are threatened by desertification, which affects more than 6.1 billion ha -- about 35 per cent of the …
NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisations (NGOs) maintain that to halt desertification it is necessary that nations make consumers pay the ecological costs of such products as tea, coffee, mango, timber and meat. Another essential requirement, according to NGOs, is the strengthening, politically and financially, of local communities so they can manage their land …
THERE is a complex link between trade, land degradation and socioeconomic development and Thailand's export of tapioca to the European Community (EC) provides a clear example. Farmers in Isan, Thailand, used to grow rice till the 1960s. But at that time, increasing grain prices forced cattle-breeders in Europe to look …
THE PRICE crash on the international cotton market in 1986 had serious consequences for the land in West African countries such as Chad, Burkino Fasso and Mali, where cotton is a major export crop. Cotton is produced both by small farmers and on large-scale plantations. The vegetation on savanna lands …
ZIMBABWE'S magnificent game parks are a big tourist draw, but until recently, the people of the surrounding areas did not feel they had a stake in the parks' success. Poaching, too, had become a major problem. Now, wildlife conservation in the country is being made to work differently - by …
WITH SUPPORT from the Ethiopian government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are implementing programmes to create environmental awareness among the people to counter deforestation that has reached crisis proportions in the mountainous country. The central Ethiopian highlands, which support more than 78 per cent of the population, have been virtually deforested by …
ONE OF Bangladesh"s leading environmental NGOs, the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), has taken the lead in rectifying a major lacuna in the Rio agenda. Dealing with poverty should have been the first item on the global agenda in Rio, but issues such as global warming and biodiversity, supported …
