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 …
GREEN thinking which has enveloped organizations worldwide, has meant that environmental considerations are uppermost when starting new industrial ventures and in minimizing the ill-effects of their present activities, products and services on the environment. While this is easier said than done, it can be achieved through a commitment to an …
Big Daddy has finally been forced to sell himself. In what the Washington-based ngo Development Gap termed a "desperate and amateurish attempt at public relations", in May the World Bank (wb) paid to advertise itself through American newspapers. Washington's plans slashing its international aid has put the International Development Association, …
Mexico's pledge to clean up the 2,500-mile border it shares with the us -- an environmental side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (nafta) -- is in jeopardy for want of funds. Foreign secretary Jose Angel Gurria says that the country had to put on hold its participation …
The European Union (eu), through its European Community Humanitarian Office (echo), wishes to establish itself as one of the principle providers of humanitarian assistance to politically troubled nations. The newest nation to avail of the eu's largesse is Haiti, which is limping back to democracy after a 3-year tryst with …
Hit by an acute water shortage, residents of Banepa in Kathmandu, Nepal look forward to gifts which include pots of water! Residents of the neighbouring village of Dhulikel -- in an effort to help out their thirsty countrymen in Banepa -- send pots of water to them mainly by the …
AS the disused Brent Spar oil platform makes its slow journey towards its disposal site in the Atlantic, irate protests to bring it to a stop have reached a crescendo, particularly in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, neighbouring the North Sea. Facing the barrage are the United Kingdom and …
Opinions on the extent and scope of the National Environment Tribunal Bill (netb), 1995, were sharply divided at the recently concluded workshop organised by the Centre for Environmental Law, World Wide Fund for Nature-India, at New Delhi. While acknowledging the importance of the netb's provision for an alternate forum for …
The most promising solution to the deepening power crisis in developing countries may be found in renewable energy systems, particularly from biomass resources (primarily wood and biomass residues from forestry, forest products industries, agriculture and agro-industries). However, these opportunities are only realisable in the context of sustainable resource production and …
In his foreword to this collection of essays, Timothy E Writh of the US State Department asserts that "the Clinton administration is poised to take a leadership role on global population and environmental issues". Many of the writers in this book are the architects of the new thinking on population …
There is today a worldwide emphasis on liberalisation and economic reforms coupled with the phenomenon of reduced government spending. Economic reforms can be broken down into two components, stabilization measures and structural adjustments. The costs of economic reforms are essentially borne in the short-run period of stabilisation, and reform experiences …
Amitava Dasgupta is an avid traveller and a keen observer. He is also one of the few theater personalities in India trying to communicate environmental messages through theater. Although he has been directing since 1970, and had a keen interest in environment since his early years, Dasgupta has recently started …
The choked trees on Delhi's pavements are being given a chance to once again breathe. Schoolchildren and activists of the Delhi-based NGO Kalpavriksh are pulling tiles off pavements to give space to the trees so that compost and water can reach the roots of the tree. The Delhi's Development Commissioner …
CONVERTING GARBAGE: Deliverance from stinking garbage dumps in Calcutta has finally become a possibility, thanks to a planned Rs 4.5 crore project for bio-converting solid waste into fertilizers. To be set up by the Eastern Organic Fertilizer Private Limited at the Dhapa dumping grounds, the plant will have technological backing …
Tibet, nomenclatured "the roof of the world", still seems to maintain its pristine glory. According to a regional environmental survey published in capital Lhasa, the area, free of man-made radioactive contamination and acid rain, is the least polluted in the world. Even though industrial and energy projects have been completed …
Asia's environment is likely to extract a heavy price in the near future. According to Philippe Beregeron, head of the Singapore-based Regional Institute of Environmental Technology (RIET), Asia needs to spend billions of dollars to provide a decent environment. Quoting World Bank estimates, he says Asia may have to spend …
The Masais of Loita, semi-nomadic tribals who are jealously guarding one of the few remaining indigenous forests in East Africa, are in a state of despair. The Kenyan government's recent decision to turn their homeground into a reserve for the development of mass tourism has unnerved the entire community. In …
Plastic and protein have joined hands for the common good of humankind. Jon Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Glasgow's Bio-Electronics Research Centre, Scotland, have successfully connected a polymer that conducts electricity to cytochrome c, a protein that plays a vital role in respiration, opening a simple way …
From May 7 to 19, delegates belonging to 26 nations, including India, assembled at Seoul for the 19th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (atcm). The confabulations, regarding steps to stop multinationals from ravaging the gigantic frozen continent boiled over, helped along by interventions from 16 other Treaty parties and representatives of …
FOR the first time in Pakistan, public pressure has given industry notice that it cannot remain free from its environmental responsibility. A heady new sense of confidence is in evidence among Pakistan"s environmentalists, ever since a 9-month campaign concluded successfully last November. The fall-out of the battle: a move to …
Those tiny, unseeable lifeforms that one so puzzled about till a few decades ago are all set to take noticeable strides into our lives in the future...though they aren't exactly in a hurry. Today, fundamental scientific insights from molecular biology are beginning to feed into a string of bio-technological product …
