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 spotted owl is creating a flap in USA. A bitter fight over its habitat has driven everyone from President George Bush to the common environmentalist and loggers barmy. This fortnight, the spotted owl lost over 680 ha of its forest habitat in the Oregon region of western USA as …
THIS fortnight the European Commission unveiled a plan, which its environment comissioner, Carlo Ripa di Meana, called "revolutionary" to staise a carbon dioxide emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000. Half of this reduction is to be achieved through a tax on carbon fuels - of $3 on …
TAIWAN is getting ready to counter the spread of hamburgers and pizza with its very own home-grown rice. The council of agriculture has recently launched a US $2 million campaign to promote traditional Chinese meals based on rice as it needs to meet the challenge of US and European fast …
MR BUSH says he will go to Rio as he is now satisfied with the global agreement of climate. Nothing can be a sharper indictment of the climate convention. Whereas the world needs long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the western nations on whom the onus of change falls, have …
THAT America rules the waves became abundantly clear to me when I witnessed USA flex its muscles over the entire world at the last session of the Climate Change Convention. The UN was reduced to functioning as an extension of the US state department. And George Bush made a "neutered" …
It was something that nobody would have expected to hear at a global environment conference. The scene: the last preparatory committee meeting for the Rio conference. The US delegation suddenly threw a bombshell. It demanded that all references to control of overconsumption be deleted as these had -very low priority" …
What will UNCED discuss? Theoretically, everything. But it will focus on: Long-term issues like global warming. National resources in the South like tropical rain forests and conservation of biological resources. Mechanisms to transfer aid to the South. Quantum of aid that the South should get to avoid exacerbating global environmental …
FOR once the Japanese are running scared from the Americans. Minolta, the camera manufacturer, recently coughed up US $127.5 million to Honeywell, the US controls technology group, which had slapped a suit for patents infringement on the auto-focus process now so widely used in Japanese cameras. The US company may …
USA, Japan and the European Community have together pledged a total of US $75 million to the establishment of an International Science and Technology Centre in Moscow which will provide stable employment to scientists in the erstwhile USSR. That this is primarily a bid to scotch the likelihood of these …
NEITHER the Honduran government nor Stone Container have had theii way. For it was the people's will that ultimately prevailed. The Honduran government has had to reject a contract that would have given Stone Container, a Chicago-based producer of paper bags and packages, the right to harvest between 0.4 million …
FEARS of ozone layer depletion have inspired research into refrigeration technologies that do not depend on ozone-destroying chemicals and which may even be more efficient than the conventional coolants. The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Naval Postgraduate School at California,. USA, have jointly developed thermoacoustic devices that chill nitrogen …
TWO resident families in California's Beverly Hills, which houses many Hollywood stars, were recently fined US $1.2 million for cutting down a neighbour's trees to get a view. The Views Wars, the ultimate in upperclass environmentalism, is resulting in view-mongers being dragged into court, and several US towns have passed …
THE Himalayan yew Taxus baccata is in the news. Researchers at the University of Kansas have found that the yew contains the anti-cancer drug, taxol, in sufficient quantities for it to replace its cousin, the Pacific yew. Indian botanists fear that the graceful tree may become gradually extinct. American researchers …
THE Chicago Board of Trade, one of the biggest markets for grain, meat, money, bullion and Fortune 500 scrips among others, is shortly to start listing an unusual commodity -the environment. In a significant step to turn over cleaning up of the environ- ment to financial markets, the US Commodity …
THE last thing you would get to know from the US-based World- watch Institute's State of the World 1992 is the state of America's own environment. Instead, you get an update on the rest of the world- from A for Algeria to Z for Zambia. This is by no means …
PRIME Minister P V Narasimha Rao"s government has taken dramatic steps in less than a year of its existence towards a liberalised regime for the industrial sector. If the new policies indeed lead to increased economic activity, there will be greater pressures operating on the natural environment. Given India"s people, …
In one example of an innovative approach, satellite monitoring is being used to enforce compliance with bilateral agreements covering the use of driftnets in the Pacific Ocean between the United States and Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Once the United States detects a possible violator, coast guard officials are allowed …
This report is intended to serve as a reference source of the mineral resources of Afghanistan, the possibilities of their exploitation, needs for further exploration and strategies and policies that Afghanistan might employ to develop its mineral resources with the support of bilateral assistance, regional and worldwide development institutions and …
Nearly 50% of terrigenous materials delivered to the world's oceans are delivered through just twenty-one major river systems. These river-dominated coastal margins (including estuarine and shelf ecosystems) are thus important both to the regional enhancement of productivity and to the global flux of C that is observed in land-margin ecosystems. …
A proper inventory of atmospheric emissions from natural sources is basic to our understanding of the atmospheric cycle of the trace metals (and metalloids), and is also needed for assessing the extent of regional and global pollution by toxic metals1. It is generally presumed that the principal natural sources of …
