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 …
Environmental management invariably raises complex and difficult issues. Economists usually tend to differ with environmentalists. While economists tend to look at the short-term, environmentalists emphasise the long-term. While growth and prosperity are important for the former, balance and harmony are the guiding principles for the latter. But the twain must …
You have talked at length on sustainable development. But your conception of sustainability seems to be incompatible with development. Could you explain? For me, sustainable development is an oxymoron. Development with a capital D has for 40 years meant economic development. But in as much as development means giving a …
"WHAT DID we achieve in 1993?" The simple answer is: "Not much!" If that is an unsatisfying note to begin a new year on, we could rephrase the question: "What did we lose in 1993?" The answer, once again, is: "Not much!" Wordplay and sarcasm aside, 1993 was an extremely …
A SUSTAINABLE society is one that is prepared to monitor the impacts of its activities carefully, openly and democratically, analyse them and use its wisdom and knowledge to solve problems. The knowledge capital of a society is just as important for sustainability as its natural or human-made capital. Several meetings …
IT ALL began in the early 1980s, when the village of Seed near Udaipur in Rajasthan registered itself under the Rajasthan Gamdhan Act of 1971 that gave the gram sabha full control over all the land within the village boundary, including erstwhile government land. The sabha, consisting of all adults …
MAHATMA Gandhi dreamt of an India where villages would be independent entities, supporting themselves by harmonising human needs with local resources. Today, driven by the bogey of over-exploitation and the steady depletion of natural resources, researchers are frantically trying to find ways to realise the Mahatma's vision by making the …
AN UNEQUAL world will always be a divided world -- and a divided world can never be sustainable. During the last year and a half of my "academic existence" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had many opportunities -- mainly through the Coolidge Centre for Environmental Leadership -- to speak to various …
Person 1: These international meetings get tiring, don't they? Person 2: Well, more tiresome than tiring. Person 1: Anyway, I think it's good that we are finally beginning to recognise environmental problems at the international level. My name is Donna Dogood. I used to work with the US Environmental Protection …
EVER SINCE the Earth Summit last year in Rio de Janeiro, there has been a spate of literature on sustainable development. Suddenly there is money aplenty for seminars, conferences and publications on every aspect of the subject. Suddenly corporations, multilateral agencies and even governments are anxious to fund research or …
THAT THE world's population problem is not merely a numbers game, was the view expressed by most delegates attending the Population Summit of The World's Scientific Academies, held in New Delhi from October 24-27. The summit statement's emphasis on reaching "zero population growth within the lifetime of our children", therefore, …
THE FUNDAMENTAL theme of organic farming or natural farming is its ecological approach: It makes maximum possible use of organic wastes, originating from the farm, to keep up soil fertility. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), which has 360 member organisations in more than 65 countries, unites their …
A unique database on mangroves -- the Mangrove Ecosystem Information Service (MEIS) -- developed by the Centre for Research in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (CRSARD) in Madras, will be operational by December. Work on MEIS is being headed by eminent scientist M S Swaminathan. CRSARD will also set up …
ENVIRONMENTAL education is a major task before this country and future generations have to be prepared to face the extraordinary task of meeting their needs from a degrading environment. Given the growing numbers of people and the desire for a better standard of living, our children will have to get …
WHEN WILLIAM Morris began his epic, The Earthly Paradise, with these lines in 1868, he was reacting to the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the unbridled urban growth of 19th century England. A century later, what was confined to the West has spread across the globe. And because we …
• Acknowledge that forests are an inalienable national resource and countries will choose uses of their forest resources according to national priorities and strategies; • assure access to technology through international cooperation to strengthen national capability; • increase financial assistance provided by developed countries and international organisations, including a restructured …
Tropical Forest Action Programme (TFAP) By far the biggest international body in tropical forest management, TFAP was formed on the 1983 decision of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's committee on forest development in the tropics, consisting of about 50 Northern and Southern governments. FAO and some aid agencies expected …
DEVELOPING countries with vast forest reserves took a major step in coordinating a joint position on international cooperation in tropical forest management at the first ministerial conference of the forestry forum for developing countries (FFDC) in New Delhi in September. Indian environment minister Kamal Nath, who chaired the conference, told …
URBAN Villages studies reasons for the breakdown of community ties and traces the genesis of social unrest in our cities and towns. It's interesting to observe how this happens in places where new buildings have damaged rather than enhanced local character; where older but potentially useful buildings have become derelict …
EVENTS leading to the 1992 Earth Summit, then to the Commission on Sustainable Development and to the UN Conference on Population and Development in 1994 have reinvigorated the South as an important bloc in international negotiations. After its heyday during movement in the 1970s for a new international economic order, …
THOUGH one dislikes pessimists who seem to have given up on our collective ability to put development onto a genuinely sustainable path, the fact remains they have enough evidence to demonstrate their case. The pace of destruction continues to outstrip our paltry efforts to limit the social and environmental impacts …
