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 …
Narmada Maiya (Mother Narmada) is a curious mix of reportage, diary, report, and analysis on the much-debated Narmada Valley dam project. Originally written in Marathi in 1990, it has now been published in Hindi. The book attempts to cover a wide range of facts and figures on the Narmada project, …
WHAT DO an exotic dish of frog legs and the homely egg have in common? Extreme cruelty in bringing them to the table, according to Compassion In World Farming, a British voluntary organisation that has campaigned against factory farming for more than 20 years. The organisation has brought out two …
Classrooms will turn green soon if a proposal by the ministry of environment and forests (MEF) to introduce environmental lessons for students and professionals is approved. MET has set up a committee headed by V H Easwaran, former director of the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, to devise formal …
The Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGQ has given a detailed reply to the show-cause notice issued by the ministry of environment and forests (MEF), which alleged the ONGC had failed to prepare a detailed risk assessment study (RAS) and threatened to revoke ONGC's environmental clearance following the Bombay High-Uram …
THE OGONI tribals of Nigeria have pushed environmental degradation to the top of the agenda for the country's presidential elections, which were held in June, by protesting against US firm Willbros laying a pipeline, which would carry oil from the heart of the Ogoni territory to the port of Bonny. …
THAT A capitalist USA wants to share with the world its ideas for cleaner businesses comes clearly through in Management for a Small Planet. The message: We have made mistakes and botched up the world's environment. So, beware the pitfalls of blind industrialisation that have made the US environment the …
THE ATMOSPHERE in New Delhi's National Museum of Natural History was charged on June 5, World Environment Day. The Care for the Environment Contest, organised jointly by the museum authorities and the ministry of environment and forests (MEF), was over and the People's Perception on Caring for the Environment exhibition …
WHEN THE UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights meets in Geneva in August, we may see another forward step by the growing movement for international acceptance for the concept of environmental rights. The meeting will review a three-year study on the links between human rights and the environment by the sub-commission's …
MOST OF the 300 million indigenous people in the world live in highly vulnerable ecosystems and have often been deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedom, resulting in dispossession of their land and resources. Because they are such a high risk group, they are also the most in need …
Brazil: All persons are entitled to an ecologically balanced environment. China: The state is to protect and improve the living environment and the ecological environment, and prevent and combat pollution and other hazards. Guyana: In the interests of the present and future generations, the state is to take all appropriate …
Environmentalists in Goa are upbeat once again. Not only has the pro-Konkan railway Ravi Naik had to step down as chief minister, but his successor is none other than Wilfred D'Souza, who has been advocating realigning of the railway route. Just before the crucial meeting of the chief ministers of …
MIDAS may soon lose his touch in Honduras because US mining giant RTZ's plan to exploit the Minas de Oro area is facing massive criticism from green campaigners, led by Wilfredo Sandoval Calix who warns, "The mine would be located in a mountainous area above springs that feed many local …
BARELY four months after the Indian Coast Guard tackled an oil spill caused by a tanker collision near the Andaman and Nicobar islands (Down To Earth, February 28, 1993), it was called to combat another spill off the west coast this time. At 8 am on May 17, the main …
IT WAS absurd of Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), to have billed last year's conference, popularly known as the Earth Summit, as "the last chance to save the world". Part of his motivation was to hype up the event so that the world's …
THE INTERNATIONAL Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) in London has been conducting research on environment- and development-related policy issues for the past 20 years. Policies for a Small Planet is its vision of "sustainable development" prepared for the 1992 Earth Summit and could well rate as one of its …
THOUGH insecure land tenure is a major cause of natural resource degradation, very little attention has been paid to the role of land tenure in promoting natural resource conservation on private agricultural land. These observations from a walk through a degraded watershed may, however, help demonstrate the importance of secure …
SURROUNDING a potential target by an army of bodyguards may actually increase the risk of assassination, according to researchers at Middlesex University, London (New Scientist, April 3, 1993). Too many guards increase the risk as it is probable the bodyguards may accidentally harm the person they are meant to protect. …
AN INDICATOR of a society's level of development is the quantity and quality of the energy it consumes. This is made clear by the wide disparity in per capita energy consumption in industrialised and developing countries. USA consumes more energy annually than Africa, Latin America, India and China put together. …
OVEREXPLOITATION of the planet's resources is causing environmental damage worldwide. An alternative is sustainable development, defined as a pattern of resource use that satisfies current needs without compromising the future. But it raises as many questions as it answers: Sustainable development for whom, in what context and with what objectives? …
What was it that led you to abandon a lucrative career abroad and return to your country? Was it your rural roots? No, though I was born on December 27, 1941, in Uttarpara village of Chittagong district, I had hardly any rural connections. I was schooled in Calcutta, then at …
