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 …
With limits set on tree felling, residents in Thimpu, Bhutan, are facing a chilling winter. The forestry services division has specified the tree species to be cut so that indiscriminate tree felling can be curbed. "The aim is to discourage the use of hardwood for long term sustainability of the …
United Nations (UN) efforts at maintaining peace in the world has benefited the US immensely. Thirty-three per cent of all peace- keeping contracts and a further 20 per cent of other UN contracts like the supply of goods and services to the organisation, have aft gone to the US. The …
That the Hydrovia waterways project, linking Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina, could spell doom for the Pantanal - the largest * wetlands in the world - in Brazil is well understood. What is surprising is that it is being backed wholeheartedly by politicians, businesspersons and farmers alike. Warns Katherine …
Stricter environment standards have put the brakes on the entry of Mexican trucks into US soil under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement calling for the free movement of trucks between US, Canada and Mexico should have begun in December 1995. The US has postponed the implementation …
THE inhabitants of Radhanagri taluka in Maharashtra today are suspicious of both the state forest department and the Indian Aluminium Company (INDAL). In the increasing list of protected areas (PA) in India, threatened by industrial pressures and demanding their denotification, Radhanagri Sanctuary is another recent inclusion. Located in the Kolhapur …
• Hospital building with other facilities: it is actually a small health centre, where only a few basic medicines are available. • Dairy farming with expertise from Israel: villagers are unenthusiastic about the scheme as they were not consulted about their needs. • Supply of drinking water at Dhangarwadi, Tarale …
AMONG the wide variety of contemporary critical theorists, environmentalists have, in various ways, questioned the continued viability of the human-nature relationship over the last 400 years. We are concerned that the exploitative practices, characteristic of modernity, have led us to a crisis of such global proportions, that the earth can …
IT'S still the age of ideas despite the failure and death of ideologies and dearth of seminal ideas to rescue the collapsing fundamentals of social order and societies. Development and Environmental Economics: The Relevance of Gandhi, written by K Rajaratnam, an eminent economist and Gandhian activist, is an expanded monograph …
While applauding the steps taken by indigenous peoples for the recognition of their rights over their territories, Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas Slayter and David Edmonds, researchers at Clark University, USA, have drawn attention to the need for a gender-based analysis of how spaces are used, valued and struggled over in …
Resource efficiency improves the quality of life. We can see better with efficient lighting systems, keep food fresher in efficient refrigerators, produce better goods in efficient factories, travel more safely and comfortably in efficient vehicles, feel better in efficient buildings and be better nourished by efficiently grown crops. Every-thing must …
THE 20th century"s obsession with economy as the prime reality could earn for it the appelation of the "Century of Economics". Other centuries had equally pronounced preoccupations with their respective features of reality; the 19th century, for instance, was dominated by an obsession with the nation state. The point behind …
INSURANCE companies have turned green eyes on their policies. Forty-three of the world's leading insurance companies recently backed a 'Statement of Environmental Commitment' which encompasses a series of green principles and also protects the interests of the companies. This also marks the formal entry of the insurance companies into environmental …
THERE is apparently more to lightning than mere white flashes of light. Excited scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Centre in Huntsville, Alaska and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks unknowingly stumbled upon bizarre bolts which materialise high above and strangely, instead of shooting downwards, they …
THE mango tree is all set to become more famous for its therapeutic qualities than for its delicious fruits. It has been claimed by some Indian scientists that an extract from the bark of the mango tree suppresses cancerous growth, and that an isolate from mango leaves checks, the growth …
THE Chinese are in an unenviable position. On one hand, they have large reserves of cheap coal, enough to meet the rising demands of energy consumption. On the other, they have to contend with the fact that with greater use of coal, higher is the output of the dreaded carbon …
Sanctions are killing kids in Iraq, according to a report published in a British medical journal, Lancet, early this month. More than half a million Iraqi children have died as a consequence of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. The report, prepared by two public health experts, questions the moral, …
Japan's nuclear dreams nearly went up in smoke when an accident occured at the prototype fast-breeder reactor, Monju, in the second week of December. About three tons of sodium leaked from a cooling system at Monju, necessitating a shutdown. The 280-megawatt reactor is operated by the government's Power Reactor and …
Around 2,000 doctors from all over the world assembled for the ninth international conference on AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, which opened on December 10 at Kampala, the capital of Uganda. AIDS has attained proportions of a national tragedy in Uganda. Educational efforts to fight the disease have yielded few …
"GOD is dead", had asserted Nietzsche, proclaiming the arrival of the age of rationality. It is true that for most people, "God" is the antidote to the fear of the unknown, a concept that accounts for all that is unexplainable. Therefore, it seems but natural that as science expands its …
Gopal Paliwal had always been intrigued by the complex physiology of wild or rock honeybees. Today, this 28-year old entomologist boasts of a doctorate (from Wardha University) on the neuroendocrine and reproductive sys- tems of the rockbee (Apis dorsata). Unlured by offers from pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories, Paliwal chose …
