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 Ramsar Convention of IUCN held in 1971 in Iran raised global awareness of the conservation and management of wetlands. Wetlands, the transitional zones that occupy an intermediate position between dryland and open water, regulate the flow of water and nutrients, thereby facilitating optimum functioning of the physical and biological …
floods sweep through the village, the land is left uncultivable, the wells get filled with pebbles and mud. Agriculture becomes impossible. A cry of despair and despondency from the unfortunate residents would be a common sequel to this. Not in the villages of the Chaksu Block of Jaipur, Rajasthan. Thanks …
THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented a special report on the impact of land use, land use change and forests (LULUCF), which focuses on the complex issue of linking climate change with forestation, at a meeting of subsidiary bodies of the un Frame Convention on Climate Convention in …
a group of Maoist Communist Centre (mcc) extremists recently abducted a forester from the Hazaribagh National Park in Bihar. The officer was released after being subjected to mental torture for six hours by the mcc. The forester had committed the cardinal error of arresting a local person for taking away …
after the abolition of the zamindari system in Uttar Pradesh in 1954, land consolidation has been one of the mammoth administrative exercises conducted to put in place land reforms. Begun in the early sixties, its main objective was to consolidate the small agricultural plots into one or two large holdings, …
the Union ministry of environment and forests ( mef ) has recently circulated draft rules on industry siting, a decade - and-a-half after the guidelines were first formulated. Choice of industrial sites has caused more conflict, between project proponents and the local people who will be potentially affected, than any …
Existence of Lake Nainital has been a matter of debate in the last two decades, because it is the only source of drinking water to Nainital city, a famous tourist resort in northern India. In the tectonically active lake basin, naturally occurring landslides have genered sediments in huge amount. In …
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------D RAJASEKHAR, BANGALORE The Agricultural Development and Training Society (ADATS), has been leading more than 14,000 coolies (landless labourers and poor farmers) towards sustainable development in 691 villages of Bagepalli taluk (province) in Kolar district of Karnataka since 1977. The society aims at building up a mass agricultural labourer …
in zimbabwe, the number of wild animals is growing, not as a consequence of conservation but of utilisation. Zimbabwe's game and nature reserves cover 13 per cent of the country's total surface area. But wildlife is also extensively managed on twice as much land on private farms, cattle ranches and …
The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) organised the Third Agricultural Science Congress in collaboration with the Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana, Punjab, on March 12. The three-day-long seminar which concluded on March 15, discussed the changing aspects of agriculture over the past 50 years and emphasised the need to …
IN 1996, Kerala, considered a seismically safe zone, witnessed a tremor of magnitude 2.8 (on the Richter scale). This is not 4D isolated case, for the state has lately been seeing an increase in the frequency of tremors in its central and southern parts. Studies by C P Rajendran and …
INVASIONS OF THE LAND Malcom S Gordon and Everett S Olson University Press, New York, 1995 that organic evolution on earth began first in the sea is certain, but the manner in which land was colonised by biota has largely remained in the realm of conjecture. The two earlier books …
The Singrauli region, which produces 10% of India's electric power, has experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization over the last 30 years. Along with this growth has come environmental degradation in terms of coal cycle and industrial pollution, displacement of populations, housing and occupational hazards, related health effects, and land degradation. …
K Bikram Singh will soon be relating another tale about the regeneration of barren land in his new film. He has earlier made two films on the same subject: Rebirth and Jhilmil. This yet untitled film is about the success of natural regeneration in Datia, Madhya Pradesh. According to Singh, …
Land is causing strife all across the Amazon basin. Many of the conflicts are sparked off by the aggressive forays of miners and loggers into far-flung areas of the Amazon as they attempt to extract coal, gold and timber. The groups range from small miners known locally as 'port knockers' …
To beat the spiralling land prices and reduce the existing pressure on land in the country, the government of Hong Kong is looking towards various alternatives, and caves happen to be one of them. Only these would be caves with a difference. The government is planning to use a new …
FIVE YEARS ago, the social forestry department in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra cleared several trees from a forest near Nandivse village to plant acacia trees. It did not know that the 4-ha patch was a sacred grove surrounding the temple of a powerful local deity, Kal Bhairon. The villagers, too, …
The hilly tract of Uttara Kannada district in the Western Ghats of India has been famous for its arecanut and spice orchards for several centuries. The cultivators have evolved complex horticultural practices to maintain productivity under conditions of high rainfall, hilly terrain and leached soils.
Farm forestry was promoted in India in the late 1970s to produce fuelwood for rural consumption. The program was immensly successful in the green revolution region in the early 1980s, but farmers produced wood for markets, and not to meet local needs. This market orientation of farmers was recognized in …
The first meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary-General is scheduled on 30 and 31 January 2014 at the invitation of the German Federal Foreign Office. The creation of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to provide advice to the UN Secretary-General and the Executive Heads of UN …
