Environment

State of the Climate in Asia 2024

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 …

Driving home a point without any solutions

THE BRANDT Commission in 1980 had called for a world "based less on power and status, more on justice and contract; less discretionary, more governed by fair and open rules". Shridath Ramphal renews that appeal, on the road to Rio, but passion is not the sole basis of his plea. …

Let`s get political

NEVER before has an idea with so much power and such a profoundly universal appeal been turned so quickly into an issue of narrow, sectarian self-interest of the powerful. Environmentalism, which many of us thought was an idea whose time had come the world over, is now like a dream …

Why don`t we set our own house in order first?

VERY FEW of the pious resolutions made at Rio are going to percolate down to the ground level in our country. On the very day our environment minister was making high-sounding speeches in Rio, I can bet that thousands of resource-poor tribals and peasants would have been displaced and uprooted …

The racket at Rio

ENVIRONMENT is a class issue. The attempt to obfuscate this fact is also motivated by class interests. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg drew attention to what had emerged as the outstanding global reality: predatory capitalism carved out colonies and empires as much for obtaining raw material at low prices as for …

Cracking down on eco crime

SINCE 1989, the state of New Jersey in USA has issued US $5 million worth of fines and handed prison sentences amounting to 165 years for environmental crimes. It could do this thanks to the Green Police, New Jersey's answer to the growing menace of indiscriminate toxic waste disposal. The …

Planting trees instead of feeding brahmins

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 …

High court grants round one to railways

ON APRIL 21, 1992, an angry mob on Devar Island in Goa destroyed a bulldozer owned by the Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd (KRC). On the same day, Claude Alvares, a noted Goan journalist, along with other members of the Goa Foundation, a voluntary organisation, moved the Maharashtra high court to …

Palm plantations

PALM OIL will be the cooking medium of the future in India, if the Regional Research Laboratory at Thiruvananthapuram is to be taken seriously. It has developed a machine which can process 1,000 kg of palm fruit per hour. The process technology covers fruit harvesting, stripping, oil extraction and purification. …

Project stalled

THE SUBANSIRI hydel project in Arunachal Pradesh may not take off as the ministry of environment and forests feels it will cause irreparable damage to the biodiversity of the region. This contrasts with the support the project has got from both the Planning Commission and the water resources ministry. These …

MEF under fire

THE UNION minister of environment and forests was under fire at the last National Development Council (NDC) meeting both from a section of central ministers as well as chief ministers who accused his ministry of being the biggest hurdle to development. While the chief ministers' ire was expected, the Union …

Can we make this U turn?

"ECONOMICS is the science of studying people's behaviour in their ordinary day-to-day life." That is how undergraduate textbooks define the subject. The book under review, however, talks about an economic revolution. But it is not clear who this revolution is being waged against. After reading the book, one learns that …

An impressionistic view of international debt

PATRICIA ADAMS attributes the current environmental imbroglio of developing countries to their debt crisis, which has been aggravated by loose lending, corruption and anti-democratic policies. She unearths various links between borrowing, lending and "development" projects to expose the mercantilism of Third World development. She does this by asking simple questions …

NGOs left holding the baby

THE RECENT meeting of non-government organisations (NGOs) at Udaipur had an interesting agenda: how to evolve a way to deal with the drought in the light of the new economic policy. But they found the subject so complex that they concluded that more meetings of the kind were needed and …

McNamara shoots from the hip

Last November, at an international meeting on women and the environment, some of us were arguing with UNFPA officials over the use of risky, long-acting contraceptives like Norplant in population control strategies. A German environmentalist interrupted: "But your women are already dying for want of health care and drinking water." …

Where a community maps its resources

MAPPING of local natural resources by the villagers is an experiment being tried out by three Kerala organisations: the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Kerala State Land Use Board (KSLUB). Economic growth is unsustainable unless the exploitation of natural resources is …

Koel Karo battles on

IN October 1991, when the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved a fresh budget for the Koel Karo hydro-electric project near Ranchi, it began a fresh chapter in the protests and agitations that have chequered the 20-year history of the project, the longest fight against any dam in the …

Saving Chilka

TWENTY-ONE members of Parliament have petitioned the Prime Minister to save Chilka Lake, a major wetland in the country. They have protested against the state government giving advance possession of 400 ha of the lake to the Chilka. Aquatic Farm Ltd for prawn culture to new agri-business company of the …

While Pakistan angers Arabs for its bustard...

IN Pakistan, environmentalists have gone to court to save the houbara bustard from being hunted by wealthy Arabs. The bustard case has not only angered the Gulf states, it has also provoked a surge of interest in the largely untapped potential of public interest litigation. When the government of Sind …

USA, Gulf say no to carbon tax, EC nods meekly

THIS fortnight the European Commission unveiled a plan, which its environment comissioner, Carlo Ripa di Meana, called "revolutionary" to staise a carbon dioxide emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000. Half of this reduction is to be achieved through a tax on carbon fuels - of $3 on …

Business sense

THE Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), under the leadership of Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, has submitted its report on environment and development Changing Course: The Report of the Business Council for Sustainable Development - to the United Nations. The signatories to the report, chiefs of 48 of the world's …

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