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 RIO Earth Summit was probably the biggest media event of any UN conference in history, much more so than the last big bash -- the women's conference at Nairobi. Women are only women, after all, but the earth is the mother of us all. Something like the fear of …
THE SOLAR cooker programme may soon grind to a halt as a result of mandatory ISI standards to be introduced this year. The Department of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (DNES) has already notified that subsidies would be given only to cookers complying with ISI standards. When the DNES and the Bureau …
A visit to Kabir Basti, 60 km from Jaisalmer, reveals an affluent village of about 70 households. Every house is a pucca structure, made of the local yellow granite and arranged in neat, well-planned rows, with plenty of space in between. The children are healthy, the village has its own …
STARVED of fresh water and no longer able to withstand the encroaching Arabian Sea, the Indus is dying a slow death. The channels of this mighty and historic river are running dry, while salt water is destroying the lush tamarisk forests which once lined the river, the estuarine timmar, or …
Gandhian activist M K Ghosh can rightly be called the father of the solar cooker which is being promoted in India today. When he was in prison with Rajendra Prasad during the Quit India Movement, Prasad offered him Rs 5,000 to design a working model of a solar cooker. Ghosh's …
PURI HAS an NGO with a difference. Residents of 1,200 villages in the district have got together to form the Brukshya O Jeevara Bandhu Parishad (BOJBP) to protect their environment and devised quaint methods for ecological regeneration. Seedlings are demanded as part of dowry and planting trees, instead of feeding …
National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources Pusa Complex New Delhi 110 012. National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources Indian Council of Agricultural Research National Dairy Research Institute Karnal 132 001. National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources Indian Council of Agricultural Research 2 Bagambari housing scheme Shivnagar, Allapur Allahabad UP 211 …
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, …
IF ONE were to visit the beach along Inchampakkam, a fishing village off the Madras-Mahabalipuram highway, one would see, amongst the wooden catamarans, a few black plastic ones. Catamarans made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are becoming popular in Inchampakkam and its nearby villages, despite their high price -- between Rs …
Environmental economists hold the brief that the best way to put environment on the agenda of various countries is to make them realise its economic value. Partha Dasgupta of Stanford University and Karl-Goran Maler of the Stockholm School of Economics have collaborated on an environmental economics project sponsored by the …
WHY HAS the National Malaria Eradication Programme (NMEP) never really been able to contain the disease? The answer may finally be here. The Malaria Research Centre (MRC) in New Delhi has found that Anopheles culicifacies, the mosquito species responsible for 70 per cent of malaria in India and 80 per …
The Indian space programme has come of age with the flawless blast-off of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) in May 1992, after two successive miscarriages in 1987 and 1988. The rocket successfully placed the 106-kg Stretched Rohini Satellite Series-C (SROSS-C) into a 450-km orbit. For good measure, it also …
SEABUCKTHORN, a multi-purpose shrub-tree, can improve the lives of millions of marginal farmers living in the Himalayan wastelands. The shrub-tree, found almost all over the Himalaya, has the potential to transform both the economy and the ecology of the region, say scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development …
WIDESPREAD deforestation and heavy siltation are steadily destroying the beautiful, but ecologically fragile, coral reefs of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. The islands experience high rainfall, 50 per cent to 90 per cent of which runs off into the sea. Bad land use practices result in high turbidity which then …
HEPATITIS B is a disease more lethal than AIDS, claiming more lives in a day than the latter does in a year. But now genetic engineering has made possible large-scale production of hepatitis B vaccine at only 2 per cent of the earlier cost. The worldwide Expanded Programme on Immunisation …
Faced with European proposals for higher taxes on oil, Saudi Arabia is signalling desperately that it wants higher prices. This makes a change from its earlier policy of restrained oil pricing. This fortnight's crucial mid-year meeting of OPEC saw the conspicuous absence of the Saudi oil minister. This shift in …
ON MAY 15 this year, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgement in response to a public interest suit demanding the closure of the 300-odd stone-crushing units in and around New Delhi. Unlicensed units were immediately closed and the rest are to be shut down by August 15. All units …
The Greens in the European Parliament have asked the European Community to cancel the debts of poor countries, to safeguard the planet's ecological balance, and generate sustainable forms of development. Holding the IMF and the World Bank responsible for creating a scenario in which, for over five years, the net …
CALL IT a guilty conscience or call it uncanny business sense. But Toyota, Japan's largest car manufacturer, is busy trying to produce a genetically-engineered tree which can absorb larger amounts of carbon dioxide than its more natural counterparts. The research programme first aims at identifying and cultivating existing tree species …
EVE MAY not have been the mother of the human race after all. Molecular biologists have been arguing that the genetic components of human beings indicate that all family trees lead back to a single African woman, nicknamed Eve, who lived about 200,000 years ago. But there is a school …
