Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
The Arvari Sansad, or Arvari Parliament, is a shining example of community ownership and management of natural resources. After reviving the rivulet with assistance from the voluntary organisation Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), the people are absolutely confident of one thing: natural resources are best managed when communities regenerate these through …
representatives of India's pulp and paper industry met the Green Rating Project ( grp ) unit of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, to take stock of their environmental performance more than one year after the release of the first ever environmental rating of its kind in the …
"There is a need to realise that ecological neglect is a weapon of mass destruction,' said Jaswant Singh, Union minister of external affairs, during a discussion organised by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation. The discussion focused on the low level of environmental awareness …
In our January 15, 2000 issue, Down To Earth had highlighted the situation in drought-struck areas of Gujarat. The conclusion was that villages with structures to harvest rainwater were faring much better than villages which had forgotten the value of rain (see:
Achampet mandal of Mahabubnagar district, Andhra Pradesh (AP), was in the clutch of drought six years ago. But it is doing well at present. “Satellite images show an improvement of about 300 per cent between February 1994 and March 1998 with regard to the groundwater table,” says Ramesh Reddy, head …
SEVERAL messages emerge from the analysis of crash programmes to harvest rainwater in Gujarat and ap. It is amply clear that the government of Gujarat has been much more successful in addressing the need of the hour than the AP government. POLITICIANS' RESPONSE: The way the political establishment has gone …
It was quite visible in several districts, whether it was Rajkot, Junagadh or Jamnagar in Saurashtra or Bhuj in Kachchh. People in several villages of these drought-prone regions looked a lot more confident in September 2000 about dealing with drought in the future. Barely four months ago, they had looked …
bringing executives of 12 leading pulp and paper mills from across India on a single platform, the Green Rating Project ( grp ) of the Centre for Science and Environment ( cse ), a Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, endorsed the vision for a better and healthy tomorrow on September 26. As …
the people of Bhaonta-Kolyala village of Alwar district of Rajasthan have constructed a stone checkdam, reinforcing their earlier Johad (earthen dam). "This has been possible because of the Rs 1,00,000 prize given to us by Down To Earth ( dte ),'says Kanhaiya Lal, one of the villagers. The Down To …
The 3rd Water Asia 2000 was held at Delhi's Pragati Maidan from September 18 to 20. The chief minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit, presided over the inaugural session, while minister of state for water resources, Bijoya Chakraborty, inaugurated the exhibition. Multinationals of the water industry participated with their latest technological …
The library of the Centre for Science and Environment ( cse ) has just put together a collection of clippings from April 1999 onwards on floods in major cities of India. First it was drought and now it is floods, not just rural floods but also urban floods. Urban environmental …
In India, Sections 56 and 59 of the Indian Motor Vehicles Act, 1989, govern i&m of vehicles. A certificate of fitness is issued under Section 56 annually to all vehicles and under Section 59 the government has the power to fix the age of vehicles. i&m got a kickstart when …
Inspection and maintenance programmes and an emission warranty system will not work unless a reliable and transparent certification process is put in place. In India, no one has a clue about the authenticity of the tests, which certify that vehicles meet emission norms at factory gates. Tests for certification are …
There is significant evidence suggesting that not the entire fleet but only a small fraction of badly-maintained vehicles with technical flaws contribute disproportionately to air pollution. The challenge is how to isolate them from the rest of the vehicles and weed them out. Due to the sheer volume of periodic …
while Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether ( mtbe) - a harmful blending stock used as a mix with unleaded petrol to increase oxygen content in petrol for cleaner burning - has been dumped in the us where it has caused serious problems of groundwater contamination, the Union ministry of environment and …
