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 …
THE TITLE of this book is somewhat misleading for what it does is to examine in depth the interaction of social disciplines with forestry in its entirety. Agro-forestry, as the term is used here, embraces all related disciplines, such as farm forestry, wasteland development, reclamation of degraded lands and management …
FOR SOME time now, the Manila-based Asian Development Bank -- the second biggest bank in the world -- has drawn flak from NGOs for its penchant to finance large, capital-intensive projects while ignoring their social and ecological ramifications. When the bank's board of governors met in Hong Kong in May, …
Increasing instances of theft of plant species from Asian countries led delegates at a recent symposium of botanists in New Delhi to stress the need to recognise the importance of taxonomy - the science of classifying organisms. The UNESCO-sponsored meet was organised by Botany 2000-Asia, a network of Asian botanists. …
SOME 3.6 billion ha of the world's drylands -- about a third of the total -- are today lying in a state of degradation. The world would earn some US $42 billion every year in extra income if these lands were nursed back to health. Most of this income loss …
ASIA TOPS the list of continents with the highest deforestation rate. The initial estimates of the 1990 tropical forest resources census show about 3.6 million ha -- or about 1.2 per cent -- of forest land are cleared each year in Asia. This is much higher than in either Latin …
When governments are desperate for cash, they sell death. While South American countries deal in cocaine, the US government is taking to aggressive pushing of its tobacco industry. In Korea, the opening up of cigarette markets recently increased smoking rates among male Korean teenagers from 18.4 per cent to 29.8 …
WHILE rice transplantation is a traditional practice in Asia, maize transplantation, a fairly recent technique, is now gaining ground in many countries. The technique helps farmers harvest a third crop in areas where none would have been possible because of a short summer. North Korea has already doubled its maize …
