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 …
We are united by a common premise: that human activities are needlessly causing grave and perhaps irreparable damage to the global environment. The dangers are clear to all of us. -- Al Gore, vice president of the United States, speaking at the Commission on Sustainable Development, June 14, 1993. "What …
LIKE OTHER countries, India's strategy at global environmental negotiations is to protect its national interests while safeguarding environmental space for future development needs. Climate Change: India played a leading role within the Group of 77 countries in pushing the issue of equity and stressed that the countries that are responsible …
THE COMMISSION on Sustainable Development (CSD), established as a UN organisation at the Earth Summit in 1992, seems bogged down by talk bereft of action. The commission, consisting of 53 countries elected on a three-year rotation basis, was set up as a global forum to coordinate action to implement an …
IT WAS former UK environment minister Michael Howard who proposed to his Indian counterpart, Kamal Nath, that their countries should form an alliance to push post-Rio environmental issues. Britain was especially interested in reactivating discussions to secure a global convention on forests. Final agreement on the convention, incorporating India's positions …
As a follow-up to the Rio summit, the Canadian environment minister set in motion events that have led to a new environmental grouping. The discussions were held for two days and had no formal agenda or speeches, but it set in motion events that have led to a new grouping …
WITH THE end of the cold war, the Group of 77 (G-77) is increasing both in size and clout. Once a loosely-knit association, G-77 now consists of 129 developing countries and its influence, especially in the field of environment, is on the rise. Frequent references to G-77 resolutions in the …
AFTER years of trying to make family planning enthusiasts understand that population control is not merely condoms, pills and other birth control devices, next year's international conference on population in Cairo nevertheless looks like it will be dominated by, well, condoms, pills and other birth control devices. The second preparatory …
WHEN CHINESE leader Mao Zedong opposed curbs on China's population growth on the ground that productivity of each extra pair of hands outweighed consumption of each additional mouth, international birth control activists were aghast. The country already accounted for about a quarter of all humans on the earth, they said, …
What are India's strong points at environment negotiations? Our main strength is credibility -- our record of conservation of natural resources. We have $600 billion worth of forests and forest products, but we do not use them to raise revenue. Indian negotiators at environmental talks still speak of transfer of …
Moderator: I understand your centre was against the forest convention, which was presented in Brazil. For me it's amazing, because as an NGO, how can you possibly go against the convention? Sunita Narain: Through this convention we will actually end up destroying forests. We strongly believe that the forest convention …
SLASH-and-burn cultivation immediately conjures images of destruction. One imagines vast areas of smouldering forest land dotted with burnt out tree stumps. But this method of farming, also known as swidden cultivation, is actually a sustainable form of forest agriculture. The technique of slash-and-burn cultivation has been practised by generations of …
BORNEO'S dense, virgin rainforests are interspersed with large, naked patches where trees have been plucked out by loggers. Meandering rivers such as the Baram that run through the forests have turned red with silt washed down from the now-barren hillsides. The government and the timber companies, however, blame tribal shifting …
WHETHER the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development -- a kind of mini-Brundtland Commission in the forest sector -- being proposed by former Swedish prime minister Ola Ullsten will come into being depends greatly on the support it receives from UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But the idea will …
IT WAS absurd of Maurice Strong, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), to have billed last year's conference, popularly known as the Earth Summit, as "the last chance to save the world". Part of his motivation was to hype up the event so that the world's …
THE INTERNATIONAL Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) in London has been conducting research on environment- and development-related policy issues for the past 20 years. Policies for a Small Planet is its vision of "sustainable development" prepared for the 1992 Earth Summit and could well rate as one of its …
FINANCING sustainable development, says the 41-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), will be the most important issue to be taken up by the 1994 global conference on the development of these states. US and European Community representatives noted, despite their "Rio rhetoric", they would accept mention of only the …
OVEREXPLOITATION of the planet's resources is causing environmental damage worldwide. An alternative is sustainable development, defined as a pattern of resource use that satisfies current needs without compromising the future. But it raises as many questions as it answers: Sustainable development for whom, in what context and with what objectives? …
THE END of the East-West conflict and growing Western interest in environment is, at the root, interestingly, of the changes taking place in the UN. The stimulus for change comes from the organisation's major contributors, mainly the US, who had used the world body in the past to score successes …
TROPICAL timber-producing countries insist temperate forests must be included in any accord reached to replace the International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) when it expires next year. Their demand was made at a meeting of timber-producing and -consuming countries held in Geneva recently, even as Bruno Manser, a Swiss anthropologist, staged …
EVERYONE agrees that the greatest achievement of the world's largest-ever environment conference -- at Rio last year -- was the establishment of the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) to monitor environmental degradation. But how effective the 53-member CSD, scheduled to hold its first meeting on June 14, will be is …
