Rio Summit

Order of the National Green Tribunal regarding forest encroachment in the process of construction of aerial ropeway connecting the base of Savitri Mandir hill to …

Order of the National Green Tribunal (Central Zone Bench, Bhopal) in the matter of Daulat Ram Vs State of Rajasthan & Others dated 09/04/2025. The application has been filed by the applicant alleging that a license agreement was executed on March 2, 2015 between the Governor of Rajasthan acting on …

The vital statistics of Rio

Source: Centre for Science and Environment.

Launch pads for climate studies

THIS YEAR, US President George Bush announced that US $1.4 billion is to be made available in 1993 to the US Global Change Research Programme (USGCRP), which will lead to a massive increase in humankind's understanding of the earth's atomosphere. As a part of the programme, a network of remote …

The green race begins

THOUGH no commitments have as yet been made by industrialised countries to reduce &rbon; emissions, car manufacturers in the West are already gearing themselves up for renewable and cleaner technologies in the near future. The European Community is pushing for stabilisation of carbon emissions by the year 2000. In Germany, …

Shortchanging the South

MONEY for sustainable development in the developing countries was the only nut which UNCED could not crack. Two years of intense negotiations concluded in Rio with the South getting very little in hand. The UNCED secretariat had estimated that developing countries would need US $125 billion worth of international assistance …

Natural jeans, clean gasoline and organic cures

• Pesticides manufacturer Monsanto is testing genetically-engineered cotton resistant to the deadly bellworm. The cotton contains genes from a natural ly-occurri ng bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis which kills the bollworm. • Hundreds of wind turbines produced by the Japanese corporation, Mitsubishi, are now being used on one of the largest …

Commission of omissions

THE ONE lasting reminder of the Rio conference will be the Commission on Sustainable Development, which is to be set up under the aegis of the United Nations to supervise the implementation of Agenda 21. There was much opposition to the idea of the commission from both southern and northern …

Who will give what?

USA: 66 per cent above the international environmental aid levels of 1990 (though nobody knows what this means in dollars). Japan: Will increase its aid support from about US $1 billion a year by 50 per cent to about US $1.4 to US $1.5 billion a year from 1992 to …

Politics of punctuation

THE SOUTH had a two-point agenda in Rio: funds and technology. It failed to get both. The North continued to insist that technology is a private resource which states cannot give away, whereas the South continued to ask for technology on preferential and concessional terms. If there was any movement …

Sands of controversy

IF THERE was one thing that African leaders wanted out of Rio, it was a convention on desertification. And finally they got it. The 47th general assembly has now been asked to set up an intergovernmental negotiating committee for the convention. The jubilant Africans, however, had numerous tense moments with …

Fish wars of an economic kind

IF YOU cannot agree to something right away, the UN has a simple solution: call a conference later. That is precisely what the Rio conference did on the vexatious question of straddling fish stocks. These are stocks of fish that migrate into one country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) from another's …

Consuming to sustain?

During the protracted negotiations on the Agenda 21 chapter dealing with changing consumption patterns, a strong bid was made by certain northern delegations to underscore the significance of the link between unsustainable consumption and environment. In the last prepcom in New York, the US had even wanted to delete the …

Speaking for the people

HERALDED in with drums, the fortnight-long Global Forum, held parallel to UNCED, was probably the largest ever gathering of NGOs in the world. It forced the world to sit up and recognise that governments don't always speak for all the people. From Bahais to Brahma Kumaris and Anand Margis to …

Blueprints for change

THE CONFERENCE has just ratified the Earth Charter, the name of which has been changed to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development at the behest of developing countries. This puts environment before industrialisation, lays down the responsibilities of developed and developing nations and stresses that development has to be …

Nothing gained, but nothing lost either

THE RECENTLY-concluded Rio conference has clearly shown that environment is now an intensely political issue with numerous contending groups of nations and peoples. The conference, known as the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), was a grand 12-day affair with over 100 heads of government present. The list was …

Time for green gadgets

WHAT DIRECTIONS are science and technology going to take now that UNCED has put environment on the political agenda? Though they were not very much in the spotlight, many scientists were present in Rio to stress that while the development of science and technology has been held responsible for the …

Stockholm and Rio: Bigger, but was it better?

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, …

Are we ready for global unity?

EVERY time an American family decides to take its car out, the resulting carbon dioxide adds to the existing stock in the atmosphere for at least a hundred years. When the polar cap cannot bear the trapped heat, it will melt and drown the distant country of Maldives or Bangladesh. …

Did Riocentro learn anything from Flamengo park?

THE RECENT environmental carnival at Rio was an extremely enlightening and educative experience for me being, perhaps, the largest gathering of NGOs, on the one hand, and that of heads of governments, on the other. There were essentially two parallel events which took place in the first half of June …

The minister`s manifesto

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 …

Southerners win the Rio round

THE EARTH Summit in Rio in June this year ended in defeat for those trying to establish some form of "global governance" over the planet's natural resources. This brought profound gloom among most western environmentalists. But it came as a relief to many in the South, who saw more risk …

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