In a world of higher electricity demand growth, clean electricity is stepping up to the challenge. Spearheaded by exponential solar expansion, clean power is set to grow faster than demand, marking the start of a permanent decline in fossil generation. 2024 both clarified and consolidated the shape of the global …
"TAKE the gold, but check the pollution": this is the new refrain, born of desperation, that the Brazilian government is directing at the thousands of gold-diggers who have reduced the Amazon basin to an expanse of infertile muck. The only way that the government can spare the Amazon river the …
What are you doing to check the massive deforestation in the Amazonian rainforests? In the past three years, we have been able to substantially reduce the annual rate of deforestation from 20,000 sq km to 9,000 sq km. And how did you achieve this? In Brazil, fire is the only …
DEFORESTATION in the Brazilian Amazon since the 1970s is lower than estimated, but its effect on biological diversity is greater. Estimates of deforestation ranged as high as 50,000 square kilometres per year to 80,000 sq km in the late 1980s. But a NASA-University of New Hampshire study published in Science …
AS SOON as our nationalist forefathers succeeded in achieving independence, they began looking afresh at good causes to pursue. They believed, rather naively, that industrialisation would raise productivity and standards of living. Since productivity enhancing innovations then originated largely from the machine tools industry, the need to promote this industry …
DESPITE being warned about the pitiable plight of the Uru Eu Wau Wau Indians in northwest Brazil, the World Bank (WB) did not stop to consider the effect on the tribals of a road construction project it was financing in the region. And now, unfortunately, the warnings are coming true. …
FEMALE foeticide and infanticide are not unique to India -- they are prevalent almost globally. They were practised in ancient Greece and were prevalent among certain Arabian tribes until recently. The Yanomani Indians of Brazil still practise it. In India, female infanticide is often attributed to poverty, but the rich, …
IN BRAZIL'S worst such incident in nearly a century, gold miners illegally prospecting on the Yanomami reservation are believed to have massacred, with machetes and guns, 73 Indian tribals. Brazilian President Itamar Franco called in the country's military leadership to control the miners and set up a special ministry for …
WHY DOES popcorn pop and not ordinary corn? Because popcorn has a thicker hull and contains starch with superior puffing quality, say Brazilian scientists who compared four varieties of corn and three kinds of popcorn (Nature, Vol 362, No 6419). They found the popcorn kernel's ability to absorb heat efficiently …
ANTS ARE hindering the return of forests on millions of hectares of abandoned pastures in Brazil by feeding on seeds of trees. According to a team of Brazilian and American researchers, two ant species -- Pheidole puttemansi and Solenopsis aurea found in the grasslands -- are voracious consumers of tree …
IN THE UN Year of Indigenous Peoples, Brazilian Indians have received a setback with the dismissal of Sydney Possuelo, head of Brazil's Indian Affairs Bureau, who was actively involved in protecting and demarcating Indian land. Under the constitution, all Indian lands must be demarcated by October 1993, but so far …
Miners have once again encroached upon the land allotted to the Yanomami, South America's largest surviving tribe of forest Indians. The miners have been ordered on three previous occasions to get out of the Yanomami reservation, even though Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mellor's orders to evacuate miners from the …
THE BRAZILIAN government swung into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000- sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the Venezuelan border to save the 9,000 members of South America's largest Indian tribe from an outbreak of malaria. Thousands of panners who left the reserve to celebrate Carnival elsewhere are …
THE BRAZILIAN government is considering winding up its Proalcohol project, set up in 1975 to counter the petrol crisis by developing an alternative fuel for automobiles, ironically because the price of "dirty" fuel petrol has fallen. About 4 million cars have been modified to run on ethanol since the Brazilian …
BRAZIL is getting too smart for the European Community. It has imposed import duties on EC milk products saying the enormous European subsidy to farmers makes its home products uncompetitive. The EC has petitioned the subsidies committee of the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to resolve the …
THE alleged rape in Brazil of an 18-year-old teacher by Paulinho Paiakan, chief of the Kayapo tribe, may be seen as symbolic of the rape of the Amazon rainforests using as a lure the theory that marketing forest produce is more economically beneficial and ecologically friendly than selling timber. Attracted …
WHILE NGOs and journalists were taking tours to see what poverty looks like in favelas (Brazilian slums), world leaders were negotiating the chapter on "combating poverty" only a few kilometres away, in Riocentro. They, of course, could not see much poverty on "the road to Rio" as the Brazilian government …
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 …
The UN sponsored discussions to prepare a global convention on climate began in February in USA. The aim is to prepare a legally binding convention to curb gaseous emissions leading to a much feared climate destabilisation. This convention is being seen as the world's greatest commitment to the environment and …
WITH the first sunrays in the morning, mouse-ear cress raises its leaves and then lets them droop as the sun sets. Just like honeybees know when to set out to collect nectar. Most organisms have a built-in clock that regulates their biological functions on a roughly 12-hour schedule. Though researchers …
Balancing national strategic interests and global concerns requires new rules for collective action The upcoming sequel to the 1992 Earth Summit, once again to be held in Brazil, will provide fresh opportunities to draft a common global agenda to safeguard the well-being of humanity -- and the planet. But serious …
