Conservation grant

THE World Bank has sanctioned a $11.54-million biodiversity and natural resource management programme in Turkey. The Global Environment Facility is contributing a $8.2 million equivalent grant while $3.35 million is coming from the Turkish government. The project will cover four selected biodiversity conservation sites in the country and will establish effective participatory planning and sustainable management.

Drought across the border

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's Chief Executive General Parvez Musharraf had, among their various other duties, one common task -- looking for drought relief in every possible direction. Both the countries almost simultaneously went through the trauma of witnessing a huge number of its citizens and livestock struggle against the hardships brought on by food and water shortage. And both saw its politicians pitching for dams as an easy solution to solve the water crisis.

Clean air at any cost

the administrators of Hong Kong have set 2005 as the deadline within which time they will try and clean the city's heavily polluted air. The region's air pollution index hit an all-time high and its horizon was engulfed in thick clouds of yellow smog in the last week of March this year. So bad is the city's environment that experts say it could hamper business prospects with foreign investors disinterested in conducting business in its vitiated atmosphere.

Gender bias

AIDS has long been considered primarily a men’s disease. But late last year, the United Nations reported for the first time that more women than men were infected with the AIDS virus in Africa, the site of the vast majority of such infections in the world.

UNITED NATIONS

With an eye on the drought situation that has gripped India, the United Nations (UN)have issued a warning that drought in Pakistan and Afghanistan could threaten millions of people andlivestock. "We do have a very critical situation," said Onder Yucer, the UN's resident coordinator for Pakistan. Yucer had earlier approached the heads of several other UN agencies based in Pakistan to seek emergency assistance to help the victims of drought in the country's south-western province of Baluchistan and areas in the southern province of Sindh.

Incomplete planning

the environment ministry has been severely criticised by the Comptroller and Auditor General ( cag ) of India for its "unrealistic budgetary assumptions and slackness in implementing schemes." According to the latest cag report submitted to the Parliament, since 1996 the ministry "ended persistently" with unspent provisions.

Japan to fund study

a tripartite agreement has been drawn between the Delhi government, the ministry of environment and forests and ghk International to conduct a study on Delhi's urban environment and infrastructure under a project called Delhi 2021. Fund for the project -- amounting to us $ 900,000 -- will be provided by the Japanese government through the World Bank. ghk International will be the project consultant.

Playing it cheap

UNITED NATIONS

Italy's largest producer of dairy products, Parmalat, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) have signed a cooperative agreement to fight world hunger together. Towards this end, Parmalat will provide US $ 1.5 million over a period of three years to sponsor FAO activities aimed at reducing world hunger.

A quiet Revolution

THE reds are being forced to turn green in the Nizamabad, Adilabad and Warangal districts of the Telangana region where the people have embraced the Andhra Pradesh government's joint forest management (JFM) programme in a big way.