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 …
THE WHOLE world, including the most sober environmentalists, seems obsessed with the dangers of a rising population. An obsession that has led people to be unjustly branded pollutants in our collective environmental consciousness. And the causes for this are essentially threefold. In part, this phenomenon stems from a misconception of …
NOT ALL scientists go along with Darwin's view that male birds evolved long tails for purposes of sexual selection. A group of British zoologists suggests the long tails may have evolved as a result of natural selection, making them a fitter species. They say the long tails are not mere …
HUMANS are not the only animal species to possess a sense of beauty. Recent research bears out the controversial view of 19th century British naturalist Charles Darwin that animals have an eye for beauty. He offered this as an explanation for the preference of females for the gaudiest males. The …
PRODUCING a newspaper or a newsmagazine is something like an unending string of little miracles. As technologists designing new machines well know, "if anything can go wrong, it will." The same happens with us too, all the time. Yet, the publication must and does come out regularly and, more or …
IT IS TIME for a grand reconciliation between nature and us. Ecological economists fear we may have already entered an era of "uneconomic growth", which impoverishes rather than enriches. They remind us that however sophisticated our technology may be, it cannot hold back the sea or replace lost topsoil. A …
THE SUB-TITLE of the book: Research Strategies and IRRI's Technologies Confront Asian Diversity (1950-1980) says what the book is all about. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), set up near Manila in 1960, was conceived and financed by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations. This book is about IRRI's planning and …
STAR Plus, the satellite channel well-known for its steamy soaps and street-wise sleuths, is going green -- and with a vengeance. It showed a two-part series in mid-March called After The Warming and has scheduled, among other programmes for this slot, Race to Save the Planet, -- a ten-part series …
"NO WOMAN ever had to hug a tree to protect it," says Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the founder of Chipko. "It was not necessary to do so, for the mere threat was enough." The concept of hugging a tree to defend it was so powerful, it brought in a new consciousness …
WHEN GAURA Devi of Reni village died on July 4, 1991, she must have been disillusioned. Two decades earlier, she inspired a group of women to chase away employees of a forest contractor -- and this act of courage and spontaneous defiance was hailed by the media as the start …
WOMEN were involved in popular agitations in Uttarakhand long before Chipko, but it is Chipko that produced courageous women who even dared to take on the state. In the Vyali forest agitation in Uttarkashi in 1974, women acted as messengers and lookouts because the men were under police surveillance. Some, …
IN JANUARY 1978, about 300 villagers from Almora district got together under the aegis of the Parvatiya Van Bachao Andolan and camped for 39 days in the Chanchridhar forests near Dwarahat. Bipin Tripathi, the block pramukh (chief) of Dwarahat, explained why: "We did not want Kashmiri Lal, the contractor of …
1973 • Chipko is born when villagers of Mandal, near Gopeshwar, led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt and the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, stop contractors of an Allahabad-based sports goods company, Symonds, from felling 14 ash trees on April 24. • In December, villagers again stop Symonds agents at the Phata-Rampur …
INDIA is the first country to make environmental auditing compulsory. Countries such as the UK and the Netherlands have encouraged their industries to conduct audits since the mid-1980s, but it's not mandatory. The ministry for environment and forests (MEF) has decided to postpone from May 15 to September 30 the …
A significant provision for forests in this year's Union budget may turn out to be a case of missing the forest for the trees. Motivated by a desire to "protect the environment and to save wood," Singh cut the excise duty on plywood from 34.5 per cent to 20 per …
RESIDENTs of oil-rich Rivers State in Nigeria are protesting the environmental impact of years of oil exploration. "Oil spills and blowouts have made our farmlands infertile, polluted our streams and fishing lagoons and damaged ecosystems beyond repair,'. complains Ken Saro-Wiwa of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, which …
WHENEVER a dictionary of green terms is written, even if it is in English, it will contain at least one Hindi word. And that word is Chipko. The idea that people are prepared to hug trees to save them from being felled excited and enthused so many people across the …
SMALL is beautiful, but not always sufficient - and this is the shortcoming that a new Filipino farming technique seeks to tackle, This method, called conservation. farming, uses the natural forest as its model but makes traditional practices more scientific and systematic and does away with costly and possibly damaging …
Harmless pesticides can be prepared for home gardens from -recipes compiled by the International Institute ofRural Reconstruction in the Philippines: Tobacco: Place tobacco leaves, stems and dust in a container. Add boiling water and cover. After 3-4 hours, dilute with four parts of water and spray on plants. It kills …
THE ABORTION pill RU486 developed by French drug company Roussel-Uclaf may be available soon in the US market, following meetings between Rous-sel-Uclaf president Edouard Sakiz and US food and drugs commissioner David Kessler. Women's groups are eagerly awaiting RU486, but anti-abortion groups in USA are threatening,a boycott of the US …
As a representative of an NGO from the North that looks into issues of the South, how do you react to conflicts between the South's priorities in sustainable development and those of the North? It's a curious situation for an activist to realise the despondency of the situation. It's not …
