Women-led and women’s rights organizations are on the frontlines of today’s humanitarian crises—but many are at risk of disappearing. As global needs rise due to conflict, climate change, and displacement, deep cuts to foreign aid are threatening organizations that provide life-saving services for women and girls. In March 2025, UN …
IN A significant development, Goa"s environmentalists recently tasted success when the giant multinational linked DuPont chemical project opted to move out of the state following repeated protests. In the bargain, the lesson they learnt was that all differences have to be put aside and that politicians are undependable for green …
Mounting protests have greeted a Brazilian government proposal to construct a hydroelectric dam on the Cotingo River in the Serra/Raposa do Sol area in the northern part of the country. The project will adversely affect the lives of the 4,000 Makuxi and Ingariko Indians living in the area who have …
THE simmerings within the environmentalist community spilled out last fortnight and much of the squabblings centred around the ailing Sarvodaya leader, Sunderlal Bahuguna. The ego clashes of people fighting for the people...the teeming millions, left large cracks in the anti-Tehri dam movement, leaving the government to relax, in the absence …
IN 1980, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked the Department of Science and Technology to have "another in-depth look" at the Tehri project, referring to the "great deal of distress and a feeling that contractors and other groups will be the main gainers." Till today, the Tehri Project has …
UNLIKE many other wildlife films in which animals are painted in an impenetrable and maudlin rosy hue, Mike Pandey in his The Last Migration has been able to get good, dispassionate footage on the desperate human-animal conflict that dwindling forest areas are forcing into the open. The film tracks the …
"FROM the Nile to the Jordan to the Euphrates, armies have been mobilised and treaties signed over this precious commodity. In recent years, the needs of ever-increasing populations and burgeoning national development have begun to approach and sometimes exceed local hydrologic limits. As shortages become more acute, unilateral plans increasingly …
SEVEN-and-a-half ha of fertile swampland, ideally suited for paddy cultivation, and endowed with several species of commercially valuable trees like rosewood and teak, would seem like a bequest to trumpet about. But for 60-year-old Raghavan Chettiar, the inheritance of just such a plot in Tamil Nadu"s Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary has …
MUCH to the dismay of environmentalists in the UK, British Nuclear Fuels has been given a go-ahead for its Thorp plant by the High Court. The decision marks the end of a long battle between the British government and two organisations -- Greenpeace and the Lancashire County Council. The organisations …
BRITAIN'S Overseas Development Agency (ODA) has washed its hands off Kenya's forest reserves. It has unceremoniously withdrawn a L12 m grant for a forestry convention programme launched in Kenya because it has fallen out with the ruling party on the issue of illegal allocation of protected forest lands. ODA claims …
UNCLE Sam has done it once again. In mid-February, the Kim Il Sung regime in North Korea finally agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its seven declared nuclear sites. The decision came after 10 nerve-wracking days during which the two countries hurled verbal missiles at …
Animal rights activists were outraged when jallikattu, a bloody bull-fighting sport, was displayed at the Republic Day pageant in Madras. Tamil Nadu Governor M Channa Reddy reviewed a series of cultural floats on the Marina seafront, one of which depicted jallikattu as a folk sport. In the sport, prize bulls …
IN A CLASSIC tussle between conservation and tourist revenue, anthropologist Richard Leakey was compelled to resign as chairperson of the Kenyan Wildlife Service, following a campaign unleashed against him by William Ole Ntimama, the powerful Kenyan minister of local government. Ntimama said the local population in or near Kenya's national …
FOR THE residents of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico's poverty stricken southern state of Chiapas, the New Year began with a bang. Just minutes into 1994 -- as locals and tourists ushered in the New Year with music and fireworks -- Uzi-toting, machete-wielding guerillas of the Zapatista National …
Soon after the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar was freed of terrorists, several national dailies carried a photograph of an alleged terrorist peering out of a "detention centre" located at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Jammu. Sources at BARC headquarters in Bombay were understandably squeamish when confronted with the …
The recent death in police firing of 15-year-old Rahimat Punya Vasave, a tribal from Surung village in Dhule district in Maharashtra, created ripples of protest all the way to the Capital. Three other tribals were injured in the firing when villagers of Akrani taluk in Dhule district -- one of …
ANY ATTEMPT at promoting awareness of the interdependence of humans and the environment is a welcome step. This is especially true of the need to tell children about the harm that has been done to the once-good earth by generations of Homo sapiens -- the only species that is mentally …
DON'T KEEP guns at home for the temptation to use them may be too strong to control. According to a recent US study, firearms kept at home increase by three times the risk of murder by a family member or intimate acquaintance (The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 329, …
AMIDST the euphoric atmosphere, a time bomb is ticking away in semi-arid West Asia. On September 13, Israel signed the Declaration of Principles with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and followed it up, in less than 24 hours, with the signing of the Common Agenda with Jordan. Though this has …
IN BRAZIL'S worst such incident in nearly a century, gold miners illegally prospecting on the Yanomami reservation are believed to have massacred, with machetes and guns, 73 Indian tribals. Brazilian President Itamar Franco called in the country's military leadership to control the miners and set up a special ministry for …
DESPITE its travails, pregnancy is commonly perceived as a delicate give-and-take between a woman and the embryo she carries. But now David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University in Boston, challenges this view by suggesting that conception is a long evolutionary struggle between the mother and the foetus. Says …
