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. …
EVERY time an American family decides to take its car out, the resulting carbon dioxide adds to the existing stock in the atmosphere for at least a hundred years. When the polar cap cannot bear the trapped heat, it will melt and drown the distant country of Maldives or Bangladesh. …
THE BRANDT Commission in 1980 had called for a world "based less on power and status, more on justice and contract; less discretionary, more governed by fair and open rules". Shridath Ramphal renews that appeal, on the road to Rio, but passion is not the sole basis of his plea. …
NEVER before has an idea with so much power and such a profoundly universal appeal been turned so quickly into an issue of narrow, sectarian self-interest of the powerful. Environmentalism, which many of us thought was an idea whose time had come the world over, is now like a dream …
THE SOUTH today is in the most vulnerable situation it has ever faced in the last 30 or 40 years. Today, more than two-thirds of the countries in this category are in a debt trap and forced to go to the North for rescheduling repayments, forced to accept structural adjustment …
VERY FEW of the pious resolutions made at Rio are going to percolate down to the ground level in our country. On the very day our environment minister was making high-sounding speeches in Rio, I can bet that thousands of resource-poor tribals and peasants would have been displaced and uprooted …
ENVIRONMENT is a class issue. The attempt to obfuscate this fact is also motivated by class interests. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg drew attention to what had emerged as the outstanding global reality: predatory capitalism carved out colonies and empires as much for obtaining raw material at low prices as for …
SINCE 1989, the state of New Jersey in USA has issued US $5 million worth of fines and handed prison sentences amounting to 165 years for environmental crimes. It could do this thanks to the Green Police, New Jersey's answer to the growing menace of indiscriminate toxic waste disposal. The …
China, this fortnight, detonated its biggest nuclear test ever. The explosion, about 70 times as powerful as the one at Hiroshima, is seen as a sign of China's nuclear prowess. And also as a slight to the US which has been putting India under the cloud for its missile programme. …
THE GAS-guzzlers of today may speed their way to extinction as the electric car of the future changes to fourth gear. USA's Advanced Battery Consortium -- formed by Ford, Chrysler and General Motors -- recently awarded Ovonic Battery Company a US $18.5-million contract to develop a battery which will take …
TRADE wars between Japan and USA are common, but now there are major technology wars brewing. And the US companies may be getting an upper hand. Japanese electronics have flooded markets worldwide with cheaply-produced and diverse products, but their capacity to be innovative does not seem to match their manufacturing …
When governments are desperate for cash, they sell death. While South American countries deal in cocaine, the US government is taking to aggressive pushing of its tobacco industry. In Korea, the opening up of cigarette markets recently increased smoking rates among male Korean teenagers from 18.4 per cent to 29.8 …
AMERICANS will now get designer food -- created by altering the genetic structure of fruits and vegetables. The first to hit the market is likely to be a sweeter tomato -- altered by Calgene of California so that it no longer produces the rotting enzyme, polygalacturonase. This means it lasts …
WILL HE go? Will he sign? Will he give money? All these and many more questions on the behaviour of the US President George Bush are threatening to overtake the Earth Summit at Rio. Bush's cat and mouse strategy is an effort to push the Europeans, Asians and Africans to …
Forests: For the South, this is perhaps the most crucial and most difficult battle ahead. The North has been insisting on a legal framework to manage the world's forests. Each preparatory meeting saw bitter negotiations as southern countries rallied together to prevent this assault on their sovereignty. This time again, …
THE BIODIVERSITY treaty which was finalised last fortnight has been hailed as a major victory for the South. As the US and France have both pulled out of the treaty, calling it fundamentally flawed, this belief has grown further. But is the treaty really so desirable? The treaty, which deals …
IT is two years since western governments, in a fit of enthusiasm for green issues, proposed a US $1.5 billion "pilot project" to find ways to protect the world's rainforests. Meeting in Houston, Texas, the "Group of Seven" rich industrial nations backed a scheme from Germany's Chancellor Kohl to test …
AN entirely new breed of detectives has come up in the USA - the forensic entomologists. Detectives were stumped at the discovery of a 34-year-old man's decomposing body,'with a bullet through his neck, in a Washington house completely locked from inside and with no sign of the killer weapon. Till …
THE first deal to trade pollution permits has been signed in USA. This fortnight, two American power plants have agreed to buy from the other the right to emit sulphur dioxide. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) will buy the right to emit 10,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide, the main cause …
THIRTY years of deforestation in the temperate regions has caused more pollution than 140 years' use of forests in the tropics. When' temperate forests were cut down in the 19th century by the colonial Europeans 12 North America, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and East Europe, they put into the …
AFTER two disappointing failures in 1987 and 1988, the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) was finally launched on May 20 from the Sriharikota range. It successfully placed the 106-kg SROSS (Stretched Rohini -Satellite Series) satellite in an orbit 450 km above the earth. The successful launch came as a, much-needed …
