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 …
Providing energy to the poor does not make good business. Take electricity. Connecting the 2 billion in the world who do not have access to large fossil fuel-powered stations requires large investments in setting up grids. Moreover, the poor are not attractive clients
Rows of human hands hanging on inside claustrophobic buses, trams and metros…Bodies packed like sardines, jostling against each other...Tempers at breaking point. And outside, more chaos - thousands of cars, jeeps, vans, two-wheelers, three-wheelers…all groaning through a choking haze of pollution in interminable traffic jams that test one"s patience and …
How is India responding to the crisis? In March 2003, the finance minister of Delhi, delivering his budget speech, promised more money so that the capital could become, as its chief minister has put it, "the flyover city of Asia". Think more road; give vehicles more space: this grand, now …
A ccording to the World Bankif gdp grows at 7-8 per cent a year over the next decadethe demand for transport will grow by at least 10 per cent a year. The worsening traffic situation and increasing travel demand has compelled a number of cities to at least put up …
function openroad(){ var popurl="html/20030515_moreroads.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=600,height=500,scrollbars=yes") } Foremost among the traditional approaches governments take is to increase existing road capacity (see table: More roads...). But how effective is this method? New roads and flyovers invite more traffic and get filled up within a few years. Experts argue that drivers are induced …
This report highlights the devastation of vital tiger habitat by mining companies for luxury items consumed in India and abroad. The report focuses on Jamwa Ramgarh Wildlife Sanctuary (JRWS), in the Aravalli Hill region of Rajasthan, which is a critical watershed forest for wildlife and local communities. It is also …
It has been a year since Anil Agarwal, the founder editor of Down To Earth, passed away. We remember him every moment. We work as his proxies. We work his dreams; they have become ours, too. His ideas changed many around the world. He changed the way we think. But …
Nobel Prize for Sustainable Development An initiative, led by Dutch Member of Parliament Boris Van Der Ham, British Member of the European Parliament Chris Davies, former youth-representative for the United Nations Ingrid Aaldijk and US-Congress member James Greenwood, will appeal to the Nobel Foundation for a new category - the …
Kuttimathan's search for sustainable development started way back in 1987, when he started work as a guide for scientists from Kerala's Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (tbgri) in Agasthyar Hills. He informed these scientists about the many secrets of the herb Trichopus zeylanicus, known in local parlance as aarogyapacha. …
It was a huge party. There were camels, horses and gaudily caparisoned elephants. Teams of sweating musicians belted out India's diverse ethnic notes; girls, perched atop plywood props designed to look like fortress towers, swayed and struck dance poses. There was food from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, turbaned waiters, false fountains …
Not surprisingly, strong anti-us sentiments were in evidence at the recently-concluded World Summit on Sustainable Development (wssd) at Johannesburg. One reason, of course, was the us refusal to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, despite being the most polluting nation on Earth. Ehrlich A and Ehrlich P best described the sheer …
STATE OF THE WORLD 2002 (US $15.95), VITAL SIGNS 2002 (US $14.95); ECO-ECONOMY: BUILDING AN ECONOMY FOR THE EARTH, 2001 (US $14.95) . Lester R Brown; THE EARTH POLICY READER . Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen and Bernie Fishlowitz-Roberts, 2002 (US $16), all published by W W Norton & Company, …
Tucked away in the latest means of implementation draft is one line that has not yet generated much interest here in Jo'berg: "Eliminate unilateral trade sanctions used to reinforce the environmental agenda.' Yet, the acceptance or rejection of this one line could indicate whether the world
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (wssd) failed Thobeka Fani, 24, resident of Alexandra, a poor suburb just nine kilometres from Sandton, the upmarket venue of wssd. Some 21,000 delegates, including 104 heads of state and governments, gathered between August 26 to September 4 to bridge the gap between the …
Unwilling to commit to a concrete sum of money over a concrete period of time to fund sustainable development in the South, the us came up with the idea of partnerships (also called "Type ii agreements' in wssd jargon) during the preparatory process of the wssd. Several aspects of these …
whether the us is undermining the multilateral process by shifting emphasis on partnerships The us is against everybody in the world. Partnerships are not obligatory for governments to be accountable. They are an agreement between two people. They may announce it or they may not announce it. It has absolutely …
in the analysis of unced 10 years ago, Down To Earth reported that the conference failed to achieve much because of the lack of faith and trust between governments. No government was willing to give away anything
It took 9,000 delegates almost 225 hours of strategising, negotiating and arguing over the language to reach an agreement on the 150 clauses of the final Plan of Implementation. After the Bali preparatory meeting, the un proudly claimed that 75 per cent of the text had been agreed upon, and …
