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 …
AT THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Harare in November, efforts were made to reorganise its bureauto ensure sgientists from the developing world are better represented. But IPCC secretary N Sundararaman said finding scientists from developing countries was difficult and some governments were reluctant to allow scientists to …
A STRIKING feature of India's economic development has been its deviation from the stages-of-growth pattern that has characterised almost all developed countries. The growth paradigm has been so pervasive, it is now almost an economic law. Countries start out as being primarily agrarian. As industrialisation progresses, the production and employment …
RESTRUCTURING the United Nations -- a subject actively debated internationally for several years now -- may soon become reality. Though the precise nature of changes in the UN system remains nebulous, the broad contours are quite evident. Various arms of the organisation have already undergone transformation. The secretary-general"s office, evolved …
BETWEEN the 1960s and 1990s, if there is one thing that is different, it is the level of material consumption of the richer sections of the world. Says Swedish environmentalist Anders Wijkman, "When I used to go to school in the 1950s, I was one of the few kids in …
POPULATION growth in developing countries is a horse that is flogged at every international forum. It is a threat to sustainability, because if consumption levels of developed countries are coupled with it, global resource requirements would become exceedingly large. Unhappily, the point that is underplayed is that consumption levels of …
THE LITERACY level of a country both reflects and influences its economic and social status. It also has a close bearing with a country's population growth rate. In India, the Kerala example shows the correlation clearly. Generally speaking, those states that have low female literacy levels have high growth rates, …
JUST a couple of weeks after UNCED, participants from Europe, USA and Japan gathered in Geneva, at the newly-created International Academy of the Environment, to attend a seminar entitled "Beyond the Limits: The Limits to Growth, Sustainable Development and Environment Policy after UNCED". The high point of the seminar was …
A COUNTRY'S economic strength influences its health level, which, in turn, is correlated with its average income level. When the economy grows, the people's health should also improve. The gross domestic product (GDP) of the industrialised West grew five-fold between 1960 and 1980. Meanwhile, male life expectancy increased by 2.7 …
BETWEEN the radical and the official view of socio-economic developments, there is a middle ground of development ideology that does not readily find a voice on television. Catalysts for Change is one such series, made by the Centre for the Development of Instructional Technology (CENDIT). It was intended for Doordarshan, …
AT THE rate at which the world's forests are disappearing, it would appear that the price for human development is the destruction of forests. This is true wherever civilisations have risen and flourished, observes author and amateur explorer John Perlin, in his new book A Forest Journey, brought out by …
That concerned citizens have the right to approach the courts on matters of social justice and that India's constitution, by implication, guarantees ecological justice are indeed ideas that have done India's judiciary proud. They have greatly strengthened democracy in the country and, over the years, public interest litigation has become …
IN PLACES like Uttar Kannada, M D Subhash Chandran, a botanist from the Dr Baliga College of Arts and Sciences, Kumta, in Karnataka, claims that the ban on shifting cultivation was largely motivated by the need to release labour for the new plantations that were coming up in the area. …
HISTORY is generally seen as a record of kings, queens and warriors. But it could as well be a record of changing human-nature interactions over time. All human societies have exploited their environment for their survival and economic growth. Sometimes this exploitation has been destructive -- for instance, the Mesopotamian …
THIS BOOK, a collection of articles by six authors, is meant to be a sequel to Blueprint for a Green Economy (Earthscan), which was published in September 1989. The theme of the earlier book was that economics can and should come to the aid of environmental policy. Properly interpreted, economics …
The Indian space programme has come of age with the flawless blast-off of the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) in May 1992, after two successive miscarriages in 1987 and 1988. The rocket successfully placed the 106-kg Stretched Rohini Satellite Series-C (SROSS-C) into a 450-km orbit. For good measure, it also …
SEABUCKTHORN, a multi-purpose shrub-tree, can improve the lives of millions of marginal farmers living in the Himalayan wastelands. The shrub-tree, found almost all over the Himalaya, has the potential to transform both the economy and the ecology of the region, say scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development …
ALMOST half of India's urban population is in favour of protecting the environment "even at the risk of slowing down economic growth" as against one-fourth who feel that economic growth should be the topmost priority. This is the major finding of an all-India survey conducted recently by the Indian Institute …
BIG PROBLEMS cannot be solved without a big vision. And big visions do not come without big dreams. The Rio conference, which will bring together more heads of state and government than any conference ever before, could have made it big if it was born out of a big dream. …
"ECONOMICS is the science of studying people's behaviour in their ordinary day-to-day life." That is how undergraduate textbooks define the subject. The book under review, however, talks about an economic revolution. But it is not clear who this revolution is being waged against. After reading the book, one learns that …
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 …
