The global cost of disasters is growing: The economic burden of disasters is intensifying. While the direct costs of disasters averaged $70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000, between 2001 and 2020 these annual costs grew significantly to $180–200 billion. But the real cost is far higher. Disaster costs …
Carnivore conservation depends on the sociopolitical landscape as much as the biological landscape. Changing political attitudes and views of nature have shifted the goals of carnivore management from those based on fear and narrow economic interests to those based on a better understanding of ecosystem function and adaptive management. In …
On October 30, 2003, China and the European Union (eu) signed an agreement committing the former to a stake in the Galileo satellite navigation system. At a high-level ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing
The Sensex stock index has risen by 75 per cent since April this year. The rupee is at a three-year high. Global investment analysts Goldman Sachs predict that India is the fastest growing of the four " BRIC " - Brazil, Russia, India and China - economies expected to it …
As a metaphor for the failure of bureaucracy, there can be nothing starker than thousands of dead creatures being thrown onshore by black waters when an oilspill takes place. If authorities are prepared, it is easy to avert any spill from blowing out of proportion. But there is always
Conservation groups are up in arms against a move to resume trade in Caspian Sea caviar. In 2001, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (cites) had placed a moratorium on caviar trade by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan. Iran, though not subject to the ban, had also joined …
www.nautilus.org The stark, no-nonsense design of the site gets one to the point immediately. This is the website of the us -based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, which aims "to solve interrelated critical global problems by improving the processes and outcomes of global governance'. Details of programs, projects …
Over the last decade, governments around the world pursued policies to involve the private sector in the delivery and financing of infrastructure services. The scale of this move away from the hitherto dominant public sector model was far more rapid than had been anticipated at the start of the 1990s. …
The world's natural and cultural heritage may be on firmer foundation now. Fifteen of the biggest metal miners and producers have signed an agreement vowing to abstain from exploring or mining at sites that carry the United Nations World Heritage site label. The sites include the Taj Mahal in India …
• Humanitarian aid tends to favour high-profile emergencies at the expense of less visible long-term suffering. Forced migration is one such invisible disaster • Forced migrants could be refugees, internally displaced persons, environmental migrants, development-induced migrants, human traffickers, and economic migrants • According to the United Nations, over 175 million …
It is not flora and fauna alone that are under threat of extinction. Tribal people, too, seem to be living on the edge. The populations of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode of western Paraguay, the Jarawa of Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Gana and Gwi and Bakgalagadi in Botswana are …
In November 1999 during the World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Seattle I led the delegation from the United Kingdom. I was convinced the expansion of world trade could bring major benefits to developing countries and would be a key to tackle world poverty. For this, developing countries needed to …
The outcome of the fourth and final mini-ministerial before the Cancun conference in September was on predictable lines. No breakthrough was made on contentious issues regarding agricultural and non-agricultural products, investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation and, most importantly, development. The meeting, held from July 28 to …
The increasing popularity of a high-fat, high-protein diet proposed by the late nutrition guru, Robert Atkins, is eating into multinational company Unilever's profits. The Atkins diet allows people to gorge on meat, cheese and fats but requires them to control their carbohydrate intake. As a result, Unilever's SlimFast brand, with …
The draft guidelines on ship recycling, finalised at a meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (mepc) of the International Maritime Organisation (imo), have recognised that the prevailing environmental standards in shipyards are often woefully inadequate. The imo is the un agency responsible for the safety of shipping and preventing …
Sixty per cent of the world's ocean area is categorised as international waters and prone to exploitation. Yet the need to safeguard fragile ecosystems in areas beyond national jurisdictions was left unresolved at two international meetings
Even as the progress made in anti- aids research was discussed at the Conference on hiv Pathogenesis and Treatment, participants expressed concern over the acute shortage of money needed to pass on the benefits of such studies to affected people. It was observed at the meeting
The latest meeting on climate change did not bring the Kyoto Protocol any closer to being implemented. The protocol, established in 1997, asks industrialised countries to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide. Its coming into force now hinges on Russia's nod. There were, however, not many encouraging …
At its recently concluded third session in Geneva, Switzerland, the United Nations Forum on Forests (unff) took a step towards the creation of a legally binding instrument. An ad hoc expert group was established to consider the parameters of a mandate for developing the legal framework on all types of …
sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is here to stay. So countries are now applying for patents on the sars virus . The ones seriously trying to cash in are the us Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc), University of Hong Kong's commercial arm Versitech Limited and British Columbia Cancer …
It was only half a year ago, but events since the Johannesburg earth summit already make it seem like a distant event. The world has just seen an American-engineered war in which the un was sidelined and the us paid scant regard to the views of even its traditional allies. …
