Typical agriculture sectors like animal production and processing, aquaculture and its processing, and fruit and vegetable processing, can be water-intensive and generate complex and sometimes severe pollution. Controlling pollution hinges on knowing its quantity (wastewater and solid waste volume) and characteristics (major pollutants and their concentration range, nature of wastes, …
Who will dispense justice in Hong Kong once the British pack up and leave? The issue has evoked a heated debate between Britain and China. Britain is all for setting up the independent Court of Final Appeal, which she claims is designed to protect the rule of law after China …
A storm is brewing again in the international waters off Canada. Just 2 weeks after burying the hatchet with Canada (Down To Earth, Vol 4, No 1), Spanish authorities have ordered one of their vessels back to port for using illegal nets. According to an agriculture ministry spokesman, the Spanish …
In May, Bangladesh shut its doors on 125 tonnes of milk powder imported from Estonia, alleging high radiation levels in the product. Locked in a wordy duel over the issue are the importer, Danish Condensed Milk (Bangladesh) Ltd and the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. Customs sources at the Chittagong Radiation …
PERUVIANS catch 11.6 million metric tonnes (MT) of fish annually but consume only 3 kg - 16 per cent of the amount recommended by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) - per head. Measures to develop freshwater fishing aim more towards generating profits, exports and employment, rather than improving the …
THE shrimp: a tiny key to a giant treasure chest. A global market -- worth US $8,000 million, 20 per cent of the global seafood trade -- lay open to shrimp farmers from all along India's 7,000 km coastline. The golden egg is the tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) gourmandised the …
Intensive prawn monoculture has repeatedly seen epidemics wiping out entire crops, or drastically reducing production. In Taiwan, aquaculture has boomed since 1984 and production reached 100,000 tonnes by 1987 -- 21 per cent of Asia's cultured shrimps. The yield nosedived to 20,000 tonnes in 1988, 10,000 tonnes the following year …
Not very long ago, shrimp was plebeian grub. Oldtimers in the south still remember that it was but small courtesy for toddy sellers to give half-a-dozen shrimps free with a bottle of the best. Impoverished local labourers still enjoy the right to fish shrimp left over in any farm after …
It cut a thick swathe down the coast: an elusive beast that bumped off a full year's crop. The symptoms were the same everywhere. The prawns developed white spots on their dorsal side, which began to degenerate. As the pathogen spread to the intestines, the shrimp lost appetite and growth. …
SPECULATION is on about the effect of global warming on fish production. The world's marine population is, as it is, subjugate to various factors such as water temperature, salinity, ocean currents, predator-prey relationship, food and nutrient availability, rainfall and pollution due to human activity and new technologies. This interesting and …
THE Atlantic Ocean is becoming increasingly rougher with a new row erupting over fishing rights in international waters. The European Community (EC) and Canada are locked in fierce combat over access to Greenland halibut catches off the coast of Newfoundland. Even diplomacy seems to have floundered. As the EC Fisheries …
On March 7, 2 British fishermen and Spanish fishing boat owners were served a huge fine for illegal fishing. In addition to the ignominy of forking out a total of US $391,380, the offenders were convicted on 15 charges of breaching quotas -- 4 of making wrongful landing declarations, 2 …
The greening of Bangladesh's coastline will commence soon. The Asian Development Bank has approved a US $23.4 million loan for a 7-year project for improving Bangladesh's forest cover and alleviating rural poverty by creating income opportunities. Under an aggressive reforestation drive spearheaded by Bangladeshi NGOs and the forestry department, landless …
THIRTY per cent of the country's net prawn yield was "eaten up" by a suspected viral disease in coastal Andhra Pradesh's (AP) aquaculture belt. An entire crop of black tiger prawns was devastated by what some experts suspect was an invasion of the infectious haemotopoetic hypodermal necrosis (IHH-NV) virus in …
Scientists at the Central Inland Capture Fisheries Research Institute (CICFRI) at Barrackpore near Calcutta have successfully achieved artificial fertilisation of hilsa, whose numbers had dwindled following the construction of the Farakka barrage in 1975. The barrage had led to the collapse of the commercially important hilsa fishery in the upper …
Following recent disclosures of its newly established projects inspection panel (Down To Earth, November 15, 1994), the World Bank is on the mat again. The panel, established in November 1994 on the insistence of 4 Nepalese NGOs, maintains that Nepal's proposed Arun III dam involves "apparent violations of policy that …
THE united stand of the labour ministers of the nonaligned and other developing countries to denounce the post-Uruguay round attempt to introduce a social clause to link up international trade with labour standards, although commendable, is still a political riddle. This Delhi Declaration's seemingly aggressive stance, following from the 5th …
The country's deep sea fishing policy has run into troubled waters. Acceding to protests by fisherfolk against forays by multinational companies into the Indian seas, the government has frozen the issuing of new licences to foreign companies pending a review of the policy, which was announced in 1991. The decision …
IN THE economy versus ecology conflict now troubling Ukraine, it is amply clear that economy is coming first. Undeterred by vociferous protests from environmentalists apprehensive about the future of the Black Sea, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has declared "categorical" support for an oil terminal to be built near the port …
THE pressure mounted by the traditional marine fishing community has once again prodded the government into responding, albeit in a Machiavellian manner. The Union minister for food processing industries, Tarun K Gogoi's announcement that the government is going to review the deep sea fishing policy is at best an argument …
