In 2019, the illegal wildlife trade reached staggering levels. Pangolin scales and ivory were being trafficked in massive quantities from Africa to Asia, exposing a network of crime syndicates operating at an industrial scale. The sheer volume of these shipments marked a disturbing milestone, one that revealed the global reach …
Project Tiger is not the great success story that the government would have you believe. India has lost 32 tigers in the last four months with two tigers having being killed last month in Tadoba Tiger Reserve by poachers using iron foot-traps. Fourteen of these tigers have been lost to …
A giant dam is about to be built. Protests are about to erupt. What looked like an admittedly temporary reprieve for the swift currents and extraordinary biodiversity of the Mekong river is now over. In December the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body made up of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand …
With hundreds of schemes and thousands of crores dedicated to agriculture failing to substantially improve the condition of farmers as also to meet the rapidly changing demands of end consumers, the Maharashtra government has initiated a Private-Public Partnership (PPP) for Integrated Agriculture Development (PPP-IAD) project under the World Economic Forum’s …
Oil giant ONGC along with a Vietnamese company will launch joint exploration for oil in the South China Sea despite objections from China, a top company official said today. “There is nothing wrong in it. ONGC Videsh has got this assignment through an international bid and we will go ahead …
The World Health Organisation said Monday it was ‘concerned’ about an outbreak of a mysterious skin disease in central Vietnam which has killed 19 people, mostly children. More than 170 people have fallen ill with the unidentified illness, which causes stiffness in the limbs and ulcers on victims’ hands and …
Vietnam has asked international health experts to help investigate a mystery illness that has killed 19 people and sickened 171 others in Quang Ngai Province, an official said Friday. The infection has mostly affected children and young people. If not treated, it can damage the liver and other organs, said …
A coalition of more than 2,000 U.S. farmers and food companies said Wednesday it is taking legal action to force government regulators to analyze potential problems with proposed biotech crops and the weed-killing chemicals to be sprayed over them. Dow AgroSciences, a unit of Dow Chemical, and Monsanto Co. are …
About 4 million hectares of crops are suffering from a severe drought in China that has hit 13 provinces including the major farming province of Sichuan in southwest China, state news agency Xinhua said. The drought has left 7.8 million people and 4.6 million livestock without adequate drinking water in …
The fragmentation of urban landscapes – or the inter-penetration of the built-up areas of cities and the open spaces in and around them – is a key attribute of their spatial structure. Analyzing satellite images for 1990 and 2000 for a global sample of 120 cities, we find that cities …
Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday. The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions …
Terming the South China Sea as a disputed region, China has warned India to refrain from undertaking oil exploration in the resource-rich Vietnamese blocks in order to ensure "peace and stability" in the area. "The area is disputed one. So we do not think that it would be good for …
Developing countries with an insatiable thirst for electricity are going full speed ahead with new reactors a year after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster disrupted the growth of nuclear power around the world. Innovations in nuclear design are tackling problems like the ones that contributed to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in …
This report documents in detail the results of two case studies on the costs and benefits of investments in reducing climate-related and other disaster risks—one in Vietnam and one in Nepal—and briefly describes the community based qualitative cost-benefit analyses (CBAs) of some other disaster risk management (DRM) strategies. The costs …
Nepal is looking to scale up its flagship household biogas programme, which has made forays into other developing countries in Asia and Africa. Initiated in 1992 with support from the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), Nepal has installed over 240,000 household biogas plants with a thermal energy capacity of 444 megawatts …
Thought bird flu was gone? Recent human deaths in Asia and Egypt are a reminder that the H5N1 virus is still alive and dangerous, and Vietnam is grappling with a new strain that has outsmarted vaccines used to protect poultry flocks. Ten people have died in Cambodia, Indonesia, Egypt, China …
Asian Development Bank (ADB) has said that people in Pakistan are likely to be particularly vulnerable to water shortages due to leakage, inefficient domestic water use, or underinvestment in providing access, especially in rural and slum areas. The Bank in its recent report titled 'Green Growth, Resources and Resilience: Environmental …
Indian aquaculture farms are upbeat about the rising prospects of farmed shrimps in the overseas market. Both the black tiger and vannamei varieties from India have been going at a premium in the foreign market, particularly in Southeast Asia. A shortage of shrimps in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and …
After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Vietnam suspended its nuclear plans and waited for more than a decade before reviving them. But Vietnam was undeterred by last year's Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan, the world's worst atomic accident since Chernobyl, and is racing ahead with plans to start construction of …
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) revealed that Asian cities were likely to contribute more than half the rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years. According to The Asian Development Bank data most Asian cities do not have effective wastewater treatment systems - only 10 per cent of …
A multinational, prospective clinical study was carried out in South-East Asia (SEA) and Latin America (LA), to ascertain the proportion of inapparent dengue infections in households of febrile dengue cases, and to compare clinical data and biological markers from subjects with various dengue disease patterns. Dengue infection was laboratory-confirmed during …
