The National Biodiversity Authority has released a new set of rules to manage sharing of benefits generated through the use of biological resources. The Biological Diversity (Access to biological Resources and Knowledge Associated thereto and Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits) Regulation 2025 was approved by the Central government and …
few people outside of the western coastal regions of southern India would have heard of kokum. Perhaps visitors to the sunny beaches of Goa remember being served a large glass of a refreshing, tangy drink after a heavy meal. Meant to be an aid to the digestive process, this delicious …
optimism is a great friend but a bad guide. The Asian Social Forum (asf) meeting in Hyderabad, India, deliberately avoided this truism while proclaiming grandly: "Another world is possible". Another world is definitely possible. In fact it exists. The numerous communities that gathered there, with their own stories of survival …
An act to provide for conservation of biological diversity, sustainable use of its components and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the use of biological resources, knowledge and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. Whereas India is rich in biological diversity and associated traditional and …
It is ironic that while India ranks third in fertiliser use worldwide, it ranks 14 and 16 respectively in the production of rice and wheat. It is even more ironic that India’s fertiliser policy ensures precisely such a result. Fertiliser use in India is dictated by the larger perceived need …
Agricultural growth in India has always laboured under the burden of producing more. The idea was: grow only foodgrains. That meant: not ecologically adapted cereals such as millets, but rice and wheat. The green revolution programme was single-minded: it came up with hyv (high-yielding variety) seeds for rice and wheat …
A third factor has led to the current debility of soils in India: irrigation. That is to say, water over-use. To feed the rice-wheat mentality, net irrigated area rose from 20.8 million ha in 1950 to 53.5 million ha in 1995-1996. Fed on irrigation, the agricultural area grew from a …
Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that humans cannot just plough through the ecology they interact with. apply gypsum: Seven lakh ha of land in …
What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us. function openpoptable(){ var popurl="http://dte-new/dte-new/html/20030131_cover2.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=475,height=500, …
getting the de facto leader of the country to address a congress of scientists is a good way to familiarise the latter with political priorities. But Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's speech at the 90th Indian Science Congress was a disappointment, even by his high poetic standards. It had two …
To the Western observer in India, it is clear that the Indian Systems of Medicine (ism) offer great potential for worldwide growth. Currently, Indian exports are a modest us $50 million annually; a mere drop in the us $60 billion global market. The National Health Policy on ism envisages national …
A new initiative for the welfare of indigenous people was launched by an international group of experts at a meeting in Bellagio, Italy, from November 25-30. Known as
in many parts of Ethiopia, traditional healers are tackling malaria quite easily with the help of a few medicinal plants. This was found during a study, carried out by researchers from Germany-based Martin Luther University. A total of 44 traditional healers were studied from two areas in Ethiopia
The German ban on the import of Indian textiles containing azo-dyes, said to leech out carcinogenic amines, sent shockwaves through the Indian handloom industry. But this proved to be instrumental in the reinvension of India's ancient knowledge of eco-friendly natural dyes. Mudapathi Balakrishnan, a textile trader in Kannur, Kerala, was …
in sharp contrast with earlier evidence, a recent study from the Massachusetts-based Bronfman Science Centre indicates, that several health supplements derived from the Ginkgo biloba tree are ineffective. The earlier studies, generally in tandem with traditional Chinese wisdom, had propounded that the tree compounds can improve memory, attention power and …
Plants are available in far-away places; women can't collect them. So we don't teach them our medicines. Gania, Medak, Andhra Pradesh Our generation will have to learn cultivation techniques from experience. There is nothing to go by. Chaturbhuj, Dudu, Rajasthan Plants that were available near the house now have to …
What is the traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL)? The tkdl essentially consists of information from 35,000 shlokas (verses) and formulations in 14 commonly available books on ayurveda, like Sarangadhara samhita and Bharat bhaisajya ratnakar. tkdl would have information on the medicines, the botanical and common names of the plants used, …
proponents of the global intellectual property rights (ipr) system have long claimed that patents and copyrights are essential for promoting innovation. Pharmaceutical companies, for instance, will think twice about investing millions in research for new drugs if they are not assured of making economic gains from a monopoly on the …
