Is it the end?

Untrammeled urbanisation has put paid to many water bodies in Hyderabad. The latest victims are the Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs. These human-made lakes have supplied the bulk of the city's water needs for nearly eight decades. In 2002, Hyderabad received about 45 million gallons of water each day from Himayatsagar and Osmansagar. But last year, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board could not draw any water from them.

Hello corporates, bye democracy

In the last decade or so, India has had an economic reforms regime, whose key mantras are privatisation and liberalisation. Our policy-makers denounce the public sector as inefficient. But this is only a ruse for proffering the control of essential services to the private sector. Even water -- the basic necessity of life -- has not escaped the greed of private companies and government officials.

Road to perdition for the Jarawas

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal are home to six tribal groups: the Nicobarese, the Shompens, the Great Andamanese, Onges, Sentinalese and the Jarawas. These tribals -- with the exception of the Nicobarese -- are on the brink of extinction today. The Jarawa population has dwindled to a measly 250.

Ways to weed parthenium out

Parthenium, a notorious weed, first sneaked into the country along with wheat grains imported from the us in the early 1950s. It has become a widespread menace ever since. The plant is a rapid coloniser and differs from other weeds in its remarkable adaptability to all kinds of soils and climatic conditions. During its initial years in India, parthenium flowered between February to April in the western part of India and between August to October in eastern India.

Dams in the north-east will also ruin livelihoods

After neglecting the north-east for years, Delhi now feels the need to initiate "developmental" activities in the region. There is good reason. Indo-Chinese ties are improving. Moreover, a sub-regional economic grouping -- comprising India, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh -- is very likely to be made, rendering the north-east a promising commercial prospect. National and transnational companies have already made plans to make their presence felt.

PIPRA: An attempt to hoodwink the Third World

The ongoing attempts to strengthen intellectual property protection regimes through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (trips) agreement, are choking knowledge transfers from the industrialised world to developing countries. And with private companies seeking control and monopoly over genes and cell lines, the world is fast moving towards scientific apartheid against the Third World.

Trade vs environment

Nine years since the North America Free Trade Agreement (nafta) was created, the environmental impacts of trade liberalisation in the region remain uncertain. It is clear, however, that neither the dire environmental fears predicted nor the direct improvements in environmental performance, stemming from higher income, have generally materialised.

Don't let the carbon go

Land-use changes are transforming land-cover at an accelerating pace. These changes in terrestrial ecosystems also affect essential parts of our natural capital -- climate, soils, vegetation, water resources and biodiversity. The antiquity of land-cover changes has been the subject of the early classics of environmental science. George Perkin's Man and Nature is a monumental assessment of data and theories on the effects of land-cover changes, particularly deforestation.

A blueprint

The use of insurance as a market-based tool for environmental management has gained momentum in the past few years. Insurance is a contract that can either broaden or narrow conditions upon which compensation is given for environmental damage. Existing tort doctrines or statutory provisions very often stipulate the conditions upon which compensation is given. In areas such as perceived environmental risks, however, it may be easier and less costly to all parties to adopt contractual conditions of payment.

A fish called subsidy

Subsidies are recognised worldwide as a serious threat to sustainable fisheries management. They distort international fish trade and penalise developing country fishers whose governments cannot afford to provide them subsidies. The debate on the size and impacts of subsidies intensified after the Food and Agricultural Organization reported in 1992 that global fisheries subsidies were about us $ 54 billion per year.