The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Low-Cost Housing in Developing Countries is a simple, utilitarian and extremely readable book. There is little new in the discussions on appropriate technology, which includes discussions on the economic constraints of the developing world, setting up of housing research priorities, and a well-written section on South-South cooperation in housing. Notwithstanding …
Something not commonly known even to the Dutch is that their country contains five time more pigs than people. The amount of pig and cow waste in the country's small land area is a major threat to surface-water quality, because the waste contains nitrates that cause acidification. A national standard …
The Netherlands has three levels of governance -- national, provincial (12 provinces) and municipal (650 municipalities). The national government determines environmental policy and the ministry of environment sets objectives and guidelines for provincial and municipal authorities who draw up their own environmental plans. These are reviewed every two or three …
HOW MUCH oil would be needed to replace all the firewood used in the developing world? According to one set of calculations, just about one-twentieth of all the oil used by the world. But for women in the developing world, access to this oil would mean relief from hours of …
UNLESS some last-minute glitches sour the deal, the new year will unite Canada, the US and Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the world's largest free-trade zone with about 370 potential consumers and a combined gross national product of more than $6,400 billion. Not only does NAFTA …
WITH THE collapse of the Soviet Union and the ongoing changes in communist China and Vietnam, the market today rules supreme. Entrepreneurs mobilise resources -- finance, raw materials, knowledge and labour -- to make products that cater to market demand. Whether they are farmers, miners, industrialists or providers of services, …
NEVER in recent history has the world witnessed political and strategic changes as dramatic as those seen between 1986 and 1991. In this short span, a once proud and mighty superpower has not only gone -- quite literally -- to pieces, but has joined the queue of supplicants paying obeisance …
THE TITLE of Frederique Apffel Marglin and Tariq Banuri's book, Who will Save the Forests?, sounds more like a rhetorical question or an impassioned plea than the launch of a sophisticated academic enquiry. One reason for this is perhaps that the forests of the world face such a bleak future …
WHILE no two health care systems are alike, certain questions are germane to all: How do markets for health care work? Should governments work in the health care market? Why, and to what extent? What form could such intervention take? What is the trade-off between equity and efficiency? The first …
URBAN Villages studies reasons for the breakdown of community ties and traces the genesis of social unrest in our cities and towns. It's interesting to observe how this happens in places where new buildings have damaged rather than enhanced local character; where older but potentially useful buildings have become derelict …
DOORDARSHAN carries hagiographies of its political masters with more alacrity and less creativity than most TV networks. But Our Shared Future -- this year's prime time tribute to the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, on his 50th birth anniversary -- was an intelligently done, half-hour documentary on Gandhi's environmental initiatives. …
Now that Doordarshan has acquired a whole bunch of new, invisible channels, it should mean more indigenous programmes on science, environment and development. This was borne out to some extent in the first week itself, but it meant nothing in practical terms. Nobody could see the programmes unless they were …
THERE is no environmental problem in the world that affects poor people as extensively or viciously as land degradation or desertification. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), about 900 million people are threatened by desertification, which affects more than 6.1 billion ha -- about 35 per cent of the …
NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisations (NGOs) maintain that to halt desertification it is necessary that nations make consumers pay the ecological costs of such products as tea, coffee, mango, timber and meat. Another essential requirement, according to NGOs, is the strengthening, politically and financially, of local communities so they can manage their land …
THERE is a complex link between trade, land degradation and socioeconomic development and Thailand's export of tapioca to the European Community (EC) provides a clear example. Farmers in Isan, Thailand, used to grow rice till the 1960s. But at that time, increasing grain prices forced cattle-breeders in Europe to look …
THE PRICE crash on the international cotton market in 1986 had serious consequences for the land in West African countries such as Chad, Burkino Fasso and Mali, where cotton is a major export crop. Cotton is produced both by small farmers and on large-scale plantations. The vegetation on savanna lands …
"TELL ME what form of transport you'll use and I'll tell you what your city will look like." This statement by an eminent urban planner sums up the deep relationship between transport modes and urban forms. Traditional cities, particularly in Asia, made multiple use of urban spaces and were planned …
EFFORTS of environmentalists to block a vast waterways scheme linking the Parana and the Paraguay rivers in South America have elicited promises from project officials that a full-scale environmental impact study will be conducted first and the project would be abandoned if its damage potential was rated high. Environmentalists, however, …
CIVILISATIONS have grown by clearing jungles, draining swamps and reclaiming deserts to produce more food, build cities, mine the earth, establish a variety of infrastructure and develop industry. This displaces people who must obviously be compensated and resettled. And nothing displaces as many people as dams. Understandably these have attracted …
Karnataka: More responsible than men MADHU SARIN IN 1987, more than 14,000 women were elected to mandal panchayats in Karnataka on the basis of a 25 per cent reservation of seats for women. Before the elections, questions were asked about the suitability of women in panchayats. Curiously enough, in many …
