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MOST POPULAR
- Man-made reasons for Uttarakhand disaster 1
- Children’s health affected by marketing of unhealthy foods
- Rush of hydropower projects on Ganga, tributaries
- Himalayan states also face risk of glacial lake outburst floods
- Wind farm threat to forests
- Capturing the monsoons 2
- Rice that binds 2
- Monsoon arrives early; kills over 30 people in Uttarakhand
- Dhari Devi idol goes missing 2
- Science meets fiction 6
- Don’t just cash in on tigers 18
- Pedestrian questions 14
- Weather dice is loaded 13
- “Come elections, our forests are looted” 10
- Odisha's waterman 6
- Kudankulam meltdown 5
- Gutter will sparkle 4
- Contaminating millets 4
- Gujarat set to develop India’s first tidal energy plant 4
- Risk of corruption clouds Andhra Pradesh solar bids 4
FOLLOW US ON
Biodiversity
Ensuring human survival
Issue Date: Dec 15, 1993
• Since the beginning of this century, about 75 per cent of the genetic diversity among agricultural crops has been lost.
• In India, agronomists predict just ten rice varieties will soon cover three-quarters of the total rice-cultivating area in place of more than 30,000 varieties.
Economic dictates
Issue Date: Dec 15, 1993
ECONOMIC demands are nullifying the efforts of the World Wide Fund for Nature, which is trying to save the rich biological diversity of the Sulieman mountain range in Pakistan.
The Chilghoza pines growing here produce edible seeds, which bring in a lot of money to an otherwise not-so-prosperous area. But now, despite a ban, social and economic demands have led to the cutting of these trees, evidence of which are markets flooded with Chilghoza timber.
Time to change
Issue Date: Nov 30, 1993
INDIA'S conservation laws have become the scourge of local communities in and around national parks and sanctuaries. The restrictions governing these protected areas curtail the indigenous peoples' access to natural resources to the extent their very survival becomes threatened. On the other hand, several cases have come to light of industrial and other interests exploiting the parks and sanctuaries with official connivance.
Bickering hinders resolution
Issue Date: Nov 30, 1993
THE BIOLOGICAL Diversity Convention meeting, which was held in Geneva from October 11 to 15 and attended by representatives of 130 countries, failed to establish ground rules for its implementation because most countries gave priority to their own interests. Consequently, the governments have asked for two more meetings to be held before the first meeting of countries party to the convention, which is expected to be held in 1994.
A change for the worse
Issue Date: Nov 15, 1993
RECENT press reports have cast aspersions on the Gujarat government's commitment to wildlife and biodiversity conservation. A notification issued by the state department of forests and environment on July 27, cancelled a 1981 notification, under which specified areas of Lakhpat taluka in Kutch were designated as the Narayan Sarovar sanctuary. The notification attempts to justify its abrupt decision with the comment that the area is "substantially in excess of the requirements of a sanctuary".
Valuing the environment
Issue Date: Nov 15, 1993
THE WORLD Bank recently organised a conference in Washington on 'Valuing the Environment'. There is probably no other way that market economists can deal with the environment except by treating it as an externality that ought to be 'internalised' through suitable valuation and appropriate fiscal interventions in the marketplace. The prices that we pay do not reflect the ecological costs of our production or consumption and these get passed on to the poor of the current generation or to unborn generations.
There's more to trees than timber
Issue Date: Nov 15, 1993
Which is better: a forest where trees and plants grow wild and free or a plantation of one or two species of trees, lined up neatly? Forests in their natural state are generally regarded as useless and chaotic whereas orderly plantations are considered to be "sustainably yielding" for logging.
G-7 links aid with environment
Issue Date: Aug 15, 1993
THOUGH retaining environmental issues high on their G-7 policy agenda, the leaders of the world's seven richest nations confirmed their determination to maintain the global Environmental Fund (GEF) as the sole funding agency for implementing the biodiversity and climate change conventions, adopted in Rio last year.
Exaggerated losses
Issue Date: Aug 15, 1993
ANALYSIS of satellite imagery publicised in June has cheered environmentalists because it shows Brazil's Amazon forests are being cleared at a much slower rate than had been widely estimated.
David Skole of the University of New Hampshire and Compton Tucker of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US found the forests are being cleared at a rate of 14,848 square kilometres a year. This showed "estimates made in the past five years have been very high, four-fold too high in the case of one estimate".
"Inside" and "outside" stakes in wetlands
Issue Date: Jul 31, 1993
THROUGHOUT the tropics, both natural and modified wetlands are extensively exploited for a variety of biological resources. These wetlands are the creation over centuries of rural populations who have nursed and managed them with care and experience. However, increasing population pressure and rapid economic growth have led in recent decades to the degradation through overexploitation of wetland habitats.
