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 …
DURING the first 20 years of evolving environmental policy, the name of the game was pollution control. However, this remained very much a game of the North because the South's game was development. The Brundtland Commission came up with an elegant compromise: sustainable development. And, it has proved a challenge …
THE EARTH summiteers who assembled at Rio in June this year have gone back to their respective countries. The hard preparatory work, the almost endless discussions to reach a consensus and the excitement of an earth summit are all over. One talks of a lull before a storm; but there …
LOW GROWTH rates, high unemployment and an ever-increasing cut in development expenditure are some of the woes ailing Pakistan as a result of toeing the IMF line. And, all of this, says Akmal Hussain, a member of the Prime Minister's Consultative Committee on Economic Policy during the Benazir era, "is …
June 1 Confusion reigns on the eve of the 12-day summit -- the biggest gathering of world leaders ever. Delegates start arriving to a spruced up city. A 35,000 strong security force has swept the city clean of the beggars, urchins and vendors who swarm the streets. Rio, possibly the …
Our position is that USA is the biggest culprit in the world. ---Environment minister Kamal Nath on the eve of his departure to Rio We cannot permit the extreme in the environmental movement to shut down the United States. We cannot shut down the lives of many Americans by going …
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 …
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 …
WHILE NGOs and journalists were taking tours to see what poverty looks like in favelas (Brazilian slums), world leaders were negotiating the chapter on "combating poverty" only a few kilometres away, in Riocentro. They, of course, could not see much poverty on "the road to Rio" as the Brazilian government …
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 …
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. …
NEVER before has an idea with so much power and such a profoundly universal appeal been turned so quickly into an issue of narrow, sectarian self-interest of the powerful. Environmentalism, which many of us thought was an idea whose time had come the world over, is now like a dream …
Environmental economists hold the brief that the best way to put environment on the agenda of various countries is to make them realise its economic value. Partha Dasgupta of Stanford University and Karl-Goran Maler of the Stockholm School of Economics have collaborated on an environmental economics project sponsored by the …
AFTER a decade of academic exercises, Indian planners have decided to incorporate the concept of agroclimatic regional planning in the Eighth Five-Year plan to ensure sustainable crop yields and spread of agriculture through ecologically-sound land and water management programmes. "We are moving from Ram rajya to science fiction," was the …
The Greens in the European Parliament have asked the European Community to cancel the debts of poor countries, to safeguard the planet's ecological balance, and generate sustainable forms of development. Holding the IMF and the World Bank responsible for creating a scenario in which, for over five years, the net …
TWENTY years after the women of UP's Chamoli district hugged trees to save them from contractors' axes, the echoes of the call "Chipko" still ring in the district's hills. With new challenges to be met, the women's fight to preserve the Himalayan ecology continues. The Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, which …
MAPPING of local natural resources by the villagers is an experiment being tried out by three Kerala organisations: the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Kerala State Land Use Board (KSLUB). Economic growth is unsustainable unless the exploitation of natural resources is …
THE Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), under the leadership of Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, has submitted its report on environment and development Changing Course: The Report of the Business Council for Sustainable Development - to the United Nations. The signatories to the report, chiefs of 48 of the world's …
SUSTAINABLE development has become the new catch phrase. Every international agency -- from the World Bank to UNICEF -- and almost every country is talking about it. But what does this mean? For environmentalists, sustainable development denotes a radical change from the past. But as a Western joke now goes, …
BY coincidence, I happened to read two recent reports together. They were UNFPA's State of the World Population 1992 and Towards a Green World by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain. Both are lucidly written, carefully documented and cogently argued. And yet I find it difficult to understand the nexus between …
THE last thing you would get to know from the US-based World- watch Institute's State of the World 1992 is the state of America's own environment. Instead, you get an update on the rest of the world- from A for Algeria to Z for Zambia. This is by no means …