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 …
CHARGES: Charges are a "price" polluters must pay for using environmental services. They increase costs of production for polluting industries. Various types of charges are: • Effluent charges are levied based on the quantity and/or quality of effluents discharged into the environment. • User charges are payments for collective effluent …
HERE'S what the future could look like: all-day or all-night power cuts but high energy bills; long queues to buy petrol at exorbitant prices; highway dacoits holding up vehicles to drain out fuel; and central India denuded of all forests to enable opencast coal mining. This Mad Max-like scenario for …
THE NETHERLANDS is negotiating 10-year, bilateral, sustainable development agreements with Bhutan, Benin and Costa Rica, which, Dutch officials say, will be strikingly different from other such treaties. The agreements recognise that the rich should reduce their use of global resources, repay their ecological debt and assist the poor in improving …
THE CLINTON administration jumped into a contentious issue even before assuming office by announcing it would block a final-stage, testing permit for a hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio. Vice-president Al Gore, casting his lot with a Greenpeace campaign to stop the US incinerator industry, said there are "serious …
WEEKS after the Liberian-registered oil tanker, Braer, was wrecked by hurricane winds off the coast of Britain's Shetland Islands, scientists and environmentalists who had predicted a wildlife disaster feel the environment's resilience may have been underestimated. The Braer spilled its entire load of 26 million gallons of oil, more than …
HARMONISING the management of environmental and trade interests is like blending east and west -- the twain shall never meet. Not, at least, in the foreseeable future. Yet, this is the central pursuit of the authors of this elegant publication, a compendium of papers read at an international symposium. Each …
GIRISH Karnad's genius for turning mythology to contemporary use surfaces once again in his exquisite and disturbing film Cheluvi. Based on a fable about a young woman who could turn into a flowering tree at will with the help of a mantra, it has a not-so-subtle environmental message. Cheluvi was …
WASHERY effluents containing very high quantities of coalfine parlicles are the main pollutant in the Damodar river. But preventing, or even curbing, this form of pollution is hampered because a lucrative trade has sprung up along the route of the effluent discharge. Effluents with high levels of total suspended solids …
HAS THE "eco-angel" fallen from grace? Fourteen years after West Germany adopted eco-labelling, its efficacy is still in doubt because of faulty selection and inadequate evaluation of product impact. Today, the eco-angel -- the blue angel symbol that denotes environment-friendliness of a product -- adorns as many as 3,600 products, …
IN THE US, private eco-label schemes, whose environmental monitoring and approval is based on an analysis of the product through its life-cycle, have taken front-seat, because the state-owned US Environmental Protection Agency has remained wary of endorsing a product as ecologically superior. Two such groups are Green Seal and Green …
THE TAMIL Nadu government's plan to construct a 737-km coastal highway from Madras to Kanyakumari has run into rough weather. Work on the 170-km stretch from Madras to Cuddalore came to a stop pending an environmental committee assessment of the impact of the Asian Development Bank-assisted highway project on the …
A SAFE vaccine against dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever has been developed by scientists at Bangkok's Mahidol University, who have been working on a WHO-sponsored research programme for the last 13 years. Dengue is transmitted by the bite of the infective Aedes aegypti mosquito and is caused by the dengue …
What is the significant insight that you have gleaned over your years in environmental politics? We've realised the circle of dependency that exists between the government -- with its five-year cycle of being in power -- and industry -- with its 20-30 year cycle of investment planning. Industrialised countries depend …
INTO THE HEART is an apt title for the autobiography of anthropologist Kenneth Good and the ethnography of the Yanomama Indians rolled into one, and for a romantic book that journeys into the heart of the unexplored Venezuelan jungle. When Good set off to study the Hasupuweteri Yanomama, he had …
MATHEMATICS is a language whose beauty can be appreciated only by those who know it. Consider Euler's famous relationship, ei = -1 (check with original). While mathematicians would find it a proposition of great elegance, most of us would be completely bewildered by such a relationship. An attempt to convey …
WE WERE a group of college students on our way up to Kaza in the Spiti valley in Himachal Pradesh, and the large flocks of sheep that greeted us on our way were our first introduction to the world of the Gaddis. According to anthropological studies, the Gaddis are an …
BIOLOGICAL sciences have witnessed a continuous revolution since 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated a double helical structure for the DNA molecule. To comprehend fully all the transformations the subject has undergone requires the reconstitution of a body of related information, which was formerly classified as genetics, biochemistry, …
WRITING of the 1919 Treaty of PeaceJohn Maynard Keynes saidThe proceedings... all had this air of extraordinary importance and unimportance at the same time. The decisions seemed charged with consequences to the future of human society; yet the air whispered that the word was not flesh, that it was futile.The …
SCIENTISTS have enhanced the nutritional value of the potato by inserting a synthetic gene into the plant and are now considering how to use genetic engineering to provide the plant with resistance to pests and disease. The International Potato Centre (CIP) in Peru collaborated with Louisiana State University to produce …
1992 WAS the year when AIDS erupted on TV screens in a big way, prompted by the realisation that being coy about it was only facilitating its spread. Ignorance and preju- dice were both targeted for attack. On Doordarshan, it became a topic for prime-time discussion; on STAR TV, World …
