The report presents a mixed picture. Over the past 25 years, there have been notable improvements in child well-being in the group of countries examined in this report: steady decline in child mortality, overall reduction in adolescent suicide and increase in school completion rates. But the last five years have …
INUNDATION is nothing new for the Dutch. A good part of the Netherlands -- 25 per cent of it actually -- lies below sea level and would have been inundated regularly had the Dutch not taken steps to keep out the sea. Right from medieval times, dykes, dams and canals …
DELEGATES to the recent international ministerial conference on drinking water and environmental sanitation, held in Noordwijk, Netherlands, on March 22-23, adroitly sidestepped any commitment to deadlines, funding or even a well thought out action plan. Most of the target dates, set in brackets in earlier drafts, did not even come …
FIVE cities in the Netherlands are participating in an innovative experiment to usher in healthier environs. They are building public housing geared to safeguarding health and protecting the environment. In Amersfoort, for instance, over 4,000 such houses are being built. A successful example of such environmentally correct housing is Ecolonia, …
THE largely deprecatory reports in the Indian media about the proposed import of Dutch dung have missed a key point. The idea seems to sound so outlandish because dung is a lowly thing in the perception of the modern Indian middle class. But if India can import chemical fertilisers, which …
THE IRAQI government's campaign to drain the Howeiza Marsh in the south to flush out Shiite rebels has prompted an exodus: Every day for the past three months, about 25 refugees have fled across the marsh to the Iranian side. Sardiya Ali, a refugee, said, "We can no longer fish …
VIOLENT aggression in humans may be because of a genetic defect, a recent Dutch study suggests. Han G Brunner and his colleagues at the University Hospital in Nijmegen report that a change in the gene coding for an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) may be responsible for unprovoked, aggressive …
Something not commonly known even to the Dutch is that their country contains five time more pigs than people. The amount of pig and cow waste in the country's small land area is a major threat to surface-water quality, because the waste contains nitrates that cause acidification. A national standard …
The Netherlands has three levels of governance -- national, provincial (12 provinces) and municipal (650 municipalities). The national government determines environmental policy and the ministry of environment sets objectives and guidelines for provincial and municipal authorities who draw up their own environmental plans. These are reviewed every two or three …
How do you see globalisation as a phenomenon, particularly where globalisation will mean only economic integration, and not a political one? Globalisation has a number of dimensions, which are now more or less integrated. Personally, I don't think globalisation has brought about only economic integration. Political integration has also taken …
THE DUTCH government has reached an agreement with livestock farmers to reduce pollution-causing manure surpluses by 2000 and thereby avert forced cuts in pig, cattle and poultry herds. The amount of harmful phosphorus in manure produced on farms will be reduced by 30 per cent of the 1986 level by …
STRINGENT environmental stipulations and falling quality, due to techniques used to boost production, have resulted in a crisis in the high-tech, $2.8 billion a year Dutch flower industry. Dutch growers are also hurting because of increasing competition from southern European countries, Israel and some developing countries, which has reduced prices …
THE NETHERLANDS is negotiating 10-year, bilateral, sustainable development agreements with Bhutan, Benin and Costa Rica, which, Dutch officials say, will be strikingly different from other such treaties. The agreements recognise that the rich should reduce their use of global resources, repay their ecological debt and assist the poor in improving …
AN Indian environmentalist recently offered me a five-word analysis of pollution in the Netherlands, which made up in crispness what it lacked in elegance. "Holland," he said, "is drowning in prgshit." The same point is made, less pungently and much expanded, in this 126-page report on the humanmade horrors of …
Welcome to the official website of the 2015 6th International Conference on Environmental Science and Development-ICESD 2015 will be held during February 14-15, 2015 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. ICESD 2015, is to bring together innovative academics and industrial experts in the field of Environmental Science and Development to a common forum.The …
The ICAFUS 2015: XIII International Conference on Agriculture, Food and Urbanizing Society aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results about all aspects of Agriculture, Food and Urbanizing Society. It also provides the premier interdisciplinary forum for researchers, …
