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 NISGA: are a proud people who live in the Naas river valley of northwestern British Columbia in Canada. Today, they are still attached to their land. Joseph Gosnell, a NISGA:, who was in Rio, puts it this way, "Ours is a land like no other. Rich in salmon, steelhead, …
THE WORLDWIDE consciousness about environment is now demanding action. And Rio was an important staging post in this global effort to set up a framework for future action. In many ways, the framework set up in Rio is extremely inimical to the long-term interests of the South and goes counter …
WESTERN NGOs and media built up certain myths about the South in the run-up to Rio. These perceptions then clouded the visions of numerous Northern negotiators. Myth: Rio is suffering from a North-South conflict and this will contribute to its failure. Reality: In reality, the North-South conflict was secondary to …
NOT EVERYTHING was smooth sailing for the indigenous community in Rio. Shock and outrage gripped the community when Paulinho Paiacan, one of the chiefs of the Caiapo nation in the Brazilian Amazon region, was accused of having raped a white woman. Paiacan, incidentally, was the winner of the UN Environment …
THE FIRST World has just discovered the relationship between environment and indigenous people. This is the primary reason for putting indigenous people on the environmental agenda. They have realised that if the world's rainforests are in danger so are the forest's inhabitants. "If they go, so do the forests," says …
June 1 Confusion reigns on the eve of the 12-day summit -- the biggest gathering of world leaders ever. Delegates start arriving to a spruced up city. A 35,000 strong security force has swept the city clean of the beggars, urchins and vendors who swarm the streets. Rio, possibly the …
THE RECENTLY-concluded Rio conference commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment held at Stockholm. The Stockholm Conference was a watershed in the international environmenial movement - it put environmental issues on the international agenda for the first time. It was Sweden which had first …
THOUGH the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was finally accepted unanimously, Tommy Koh of Singapore, chairperson of UNCED's main committee, had to resort to a lot of jugglery to effect the compromise in the face of repeated threats from the US and other delegations. The Rio declaration is a …
Our position is that USA is the biggest culprit in the world. ---Environment minister Kamal Nath on the eve of his departure to Rio We cannot permit the extreme in the environmental movement to shut down the United States. We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going …
• Human beings are at the centre of sustainable development. •States have the sovereign right to exploit their own resources. • The right to development must be so fulfilled as to meet the needs of present and future generations. • Poverty eradication is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development. • …
ENVIRONMENT has emerged as a major concern for the world community. And rightly so, since the global environment is affected by the actions of different countries. The theme has several dimensions: from saving the ozone layer to protecting biodiversity; from trade in hazardous wastes to managing tropical forests. Discussions on …
IN JUNE 1972, I was in Stockholm, at the UN Conference on the Human Environment. In June 1992, I was in Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Environment and Development. What was the difference? Rio was bigger. In Stockholm, every meeting was within ten minutes' walking distance. Except, …
The minister of state for environment, Kamal Nath, had some radical words to say in Rio. "I don't understand why people here are talking about forests being national or global resources. In my country, they are more community resources," he told an interviewer. Surely, that statement will gladden the hearts …
THE BRANDT Commission in 1980 had called for a world "based less on power and status, more on justice and contract; less discretionary, more governed by fair and open rules". Shridath Ramphal renews that appeal, on the road to Rio, but passion is not the sole basis of his plea. …
NEVER before has an idea with so much power and such a profoundly universal appeal been turned so quickly into an issue of narrow, sectarian self-interest of the powerful. Environmentalism, which many of us thought was an idea whose time had come the world over, is now like a dream …
VERY FEW of the pious resolutions made at Rio are going to percolate down to the ground level in our country. On the very day our environment minister was making high-sounding speeches in Rio, I can bet that thousands of resource-poor tribals and peasants would have been displaced and uprooted …
ENVIRONMENT is a class issue. The attempt to obfuscate this fact is also motivated by class interests. Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg drew attention to what had emerged as the outstanding global reality: predatory capitalism carved out colonies and empires as much for obtaining raw material at low prices as for …
SINCE 1989, the state of New Jersey in USA has issued US $5 million worth of fines and handed prison sentences amounting to 165 years for environmental crimes. It could do this thanks to the Green Police, New Jersey's answer to the growing menace of indiscriminate toxic waste disposal. The …
PURI HAS an NGO with a difference. Residents of 1,200 villages in the district have got together to form the Brukshya O Jeevara Bandhu Parishad (BOJBP) to protect their environment and devised quaint methods for ecological regeneration. Seedlings are demanded as part of dowry and planting trees, instead of feeding …
PALM OIL will be the cooking medium of the future in India, if the Regional Research Laboratory at Thiruvananthapuram is to be taken seriously. It has developed a machine which can process 1,000 kg of palm fruit per hour. The process technology covers fruit harvesting, stripping, oil extraction and purification. …
