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 proposed Nam Thuen II hydroelectric dam could trigger off ecological disaster in the Nakai plateau in central Laos. Largescale logging is going on to clear the 447 sq km area for a huge reservoir for the us $1.2 billion dam. The government sees such dam projects as an easy …
Engines that use hydrogen as fuel are environmentally the most suitable, but a sufficient supply of fuel is the only impediment to the mass production of such engines. Metal- lurgical engineers from the Baikov Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Baikov have now found a way out. An alloy …
The country seems to have become wiser in environmental matters after a dam rupture in thd Omai gold mine last Augusti resulted in the spillage of three million cu m of cyanW-contaminated water into the Essequibo, the country's biggest river. The environmentalists are now concerned about the impact of the …
If the present birth rate continues, Pakistan's population will grow by leaps and bounds and by the year 2050, it will rank third behind China and India. This has been projected by a study carried out by Washington-based Population Action International. The present population will triple to 381 million in …
ALL predictions about the world having sufficient oil stocks for the next 30 years may have been a lot of wishful thinking after all. A recent report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) based in Washington DC, says that oil supplies could start drying up as early as 2007 AD, …
THIS April, the UK government has come out with a Green Paper (Transport - The Way Forward) in response to a well researched report on transport and environment, published by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCFP) in October 1995 (Eighteenth Report: Transport and the Environment). The RCEP report clearly …
A fossilised jaw discovered last year in the Yuanqu river basin, in the southern part of China's Shanxi province is probably an early ancestor of the modern monkey, ape and even humans. Scientists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, US, and the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and …
• A new system of trunk road planning to avoid planning delays • New power to local authorities to manage traffic demand in their areas and reduce vehicular pollution • Promoting the use of bus • Continuing transfer of transport operations, especially the railways, into the private sector to free …
IF You think science is boring, forbidding, unpoetic, egoistic, unintellectual, anti- environment and chauvinistic, you are either too naive to confuse science with politics or a neo-Luddite brainwashed by anti-science propagandists, or an unfortunate victim of uninspiring science teachers. The truth is otherwise, but many do not know that. Indeed, …
We now have a new government. To those of us concerned about the environment, it is obvious that the biggest challenge before this government will be to create systems of governance that bring about a healthy balance between environment and development. With a population ready to cross a billion, and …
TOUTED to be the best if not the only option for cures against major diseases, biotechnology had seemed to falter midway. Now, however, it is poised for a major breakthrough in treating cancer. A monoclonal antibody - a product of medical innovation - will soon have a go at treating …
THE environment crisis which is threatening to engulf us has forced the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to do a rethink on how to save the natural resources. In a recent two-day meeting at Kuala Lumpur, officials of the ASEAN working group on environmental economics decided to develop an …
THE anaconda - the world's largest snake - carries the notorious reputation in folklore of being a monstrous, man-eating reptile that exhumes poisonous gases. It is also known to hypnotise its human victims. The species (Eunectes murinus) is found throughout South America's Orinoco and Amazon river basins. Scientists are now …
Even as the country is emerging from the ruins of decades of war, it is faced with another kind of threat. Continuing violence and an open market economy have brought the country on the brink of environmental devastation. Unchecked logging could lead to disasters such as soil erosion and flooding. …
With a US $30 million grant from the European Commission (EC) announced recently, the Punjab and North West Frontier provinces in Pakistan are being targeted for environmental rehabilitation. Gaspard Dunkelsbuhler, head of the EC delegation in Pakistan said the grant which be will given over a period of seven years …
OF ALL the rhilitary weapons used, landmines have caused maximum devastation, more to unsuspecting civilians than to the actual targets. Realising this, the United Nations undertook a series of steps to persuade governments to avoid using landmines. At the final review session on the landmine protocol of the Conventional Weapons …
In a pioneering effort, Vortoil Separation Systems Ltd of Gloucester, UK, has developed a hydro cyclone separator to remove oil from water. The hydrocyclone separator can convert the kinetic energy contained by flowing liquids into powerful centrifugal forces. This results in the instantaneous separation of oil and water. The vortex …
IF SIGNIFICANT changes in the development policies of east Asian countries do not come about, each country will suffer serious damages from global warming, acid rain and local air pollution, among others; and it is the environmental NGOS in this region that should lead the way to initiate these changes. …
THERE are very few countries in the world that have such a sophisticated environmental policy as the Netherlands. And there are very few countries on the face of the earth that have polluted their environment so much, as have we in the Netherlands. These two facts, of course, are interrelated. …
