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 muckiest city in India suddenly stepped into glass slippers and pert ecofriendliness last fortnight. Local NGOs, environmentalists, craftspersons and sundry others with a green bent hung together and tried to inject adrenalin into languid Delhites to turn them into environment buffs. High on the list of programmes was Dilli …
THE Resource Art exhibition at New Delhi's Max Mueller Bhavan took a lateral -- often oblique -- view of the interaction between people and nature. Based on a show of contemporary Installation Art in Berlin, the Delhi version comprises photographs of the original works and the artists' explanations. The individual …
SOME economists and planning pundits are foxed by a paradox. While their timetested tools for measuring economic development -- Gross and Net Domestic Product -- indicate that a country is growing rich, they still find themselves at a loss to explain the hidden reality behind the columns of their balance …
In 1986, the Foundation for Community Organisation and Management Technology installed the community management system in 5 municipalities in Negros Occidental -- Bago, Pulupandan, Valliadollid, Salvador-Benedicto and Murcia. The project was supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for 2 years. These 5 municipalities are integrated by a river …
Western aid to developing countries has fallen to a 20-year low according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (oecd). In its annual report, the oecd warns that stagnant budgets could trigger a "vicious circle" of inadequate aid for development. There might be a drain on resources for the …
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairperson Ranganath Mishra has asserted that environmental violations such as pollution and fouling up the atmosphere are tantamount to denial of the fundamental rights of people. The assertion marks the commission's slow but steady expansion of its area of operation and jurisdiction. Responding to a …
INDIAN industry has changed tack. Productivity and profiteering have acquired a new companion -- green intent. The 11th Indian Engineering Trade Fair-'95 (IETF), held in Delhi this February, marked the coming on stream of an industrial culture where conservation concerns become intrinsic, and cleaner operations a commitment the industry cannot …
"ATTACKING Poverty, Building Solidarity, Creating Jobs" --these are the 3 central themes on which the United Nations-sponsored World Summit For Social Development, to be held from March 6-12 in Copenhagen, Denmark, rests. Various international communities are patching together a last-minute-bid to define their stands on these issues. For, despite the …
THE industrialised countries are back to their pre-Rio game of chess. They imposed their narcissistic environmental agenda on the economically atremble South by virtually bamboozling it into signing the treaty on climate change in 1992. Three years later, the North has not only reneged on its commitments, but also seems …
The plot thickens, a clip (15 min) produced by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, gives an insight into how the world of advertising propagates values and messages that are outdated and are shot through with gender and racial biases. The film looks at a VIP suitcase advertisement, built around …
A DREAM blown to dust is how you could describe today"s wheezing New Bombay, the once promised green haven on the fringe of gas and smog smothered Greater Bombay. Two decades ago, the Bombay Municipal Regional Development Authority (BMRDA) had decided to develop a clean, self-sufficient residential area west of …
After an initial whimper of protest, Southern governments accepted the partly reformed global environmental facility (GEF) as an interim mechanism to fund the implementation of decisions at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. But loud dissent was heard from the NGO camp when the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute recently proposed …
IS WATER pollution all about throwing rubbish and other unwanted things into the water? No. In fact, a harmless activity like farming could lead to something as insidious as nitrate pollution. In 1989, England's National River Authority shortlisted 10 areas in the country which had high levels of nitrates in …
BY THE time this editorial is out, the Akatsuki Maru, the Japanese ship due to elbow through 11 tonnes of reprocessed plutonium waste from the French port of Cherbourg to Japan, will probably be honking its horn. Already, its path home is a solid wall of protest; the Caribbean, the …
ENVIRONMENTAL issues seem to be fetching considerable mileage for television programmers who flood us from abroad. Even Baywatch last week featured an environmental issue: when one of the shapely lifeguards put up a personal protest over an offshore oil company, sardonically named ECO (Environmentaly Correct Oil). But the other new …
THE 2nd National Children's Science Congress (NCSC) was organised by the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC)-network, in the last week of December 1994. With a stated objective -- to "clean up India", no less -- the congress, unfortunately, couldn't find a cleaner venue in the capital than …
European railway companies have decided to undergo a facelift. A consortium of 11 railway companies are joining hands to develop a crossborder European communications network. It plans to lay fibre optic cables alongside Europe's rail lines to provide an uninterrupted network transnationally. The consortium has linked up with Global Telesystems …
ALL it takes is a blow to settle a dispute: the blowout in the rig at Allawaram village in Pasarlapudi taluka, Andhra Pradesh, did just that. There is little question now that the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) passed its brief: to bring the country as close as possible …
"THE west is the best". Rocker Jim Morrison in a song called The End. The song revolves around the phrase, exposing its contradictions with images of incest and "children going insane". Today, Morrison is dead and the song has become a classic, mark of a bygone countercultural moment. But the …
MURPHY'S oft-proven first law -- "If something can go wrong, it will" -- is something which appears to have been given the go-by, on their fast-forward to striking paydirt, by the decisionmakers at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), if the experience at the recent blowout at Allwaram village …
