Special Efforts

Source: CSE Survey, 1998 NOTE: Names of CMs in order of ranking done by environmentalist

"The new land Bill will displace More people"

You initiated this campaign against the new Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill. Do you think it will succeed? Has it become a political issue? Interviewee:  Walter Fernandes

Creeping malady

OVER the last 30 years, severe soil degradation has ravaged the state of Gujarat. If this trend continues, as much as 30 per cent of the state's land resources could be completely degraded by the turn of the century, warns a recent report of the Gujarat Ecology Commission (GEC).

Rehabilitating land

LAND holdings in the hills of Uttar Pradesh are small and scattered, sometimes several kilometres apart. As a result, rehabilitation of degraded or wasteland in these areas has become a problem. Farmers waste a lot of time going from one field to another, which makes cultivation unprofitable. The result: vast amounts of land have been abandoned.

More or less equal

IT is time humans learnt to manage their consumption patterns in an equitable manner. Growing inequity in the consumption of the world's resources is becoming one of the most pressing problems of the 20th Century. The United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report released this year attempts to highlight this problem. Ever-increasing consumption is putting a strain on the environment, polluting the Earth, destroying the ecosystem and is also undermining lifestyles. Thus, the report reveals the deadly side-effects of the development model the North follows.

Bay watch!

A SATELLITE picture of the Earth, taken at night, would show a steady stream of light along the world's coastlines. Half the world's population - about 3.2 billion people - live and work within 200 kilometres of the coasts, which account for 10 per cent of the Earth's land area. Besides functioning as effective barriers against wind, waves and tides, the coasts are also home to some of the world's richest biodiversity.

TOXIC TRAIL

BAJWA, a village in Vadodara district of Gujarat, looks no different from the other villages that dot the state. But people here breathe toxins, drink contaminated water and have no agricultural land to be proud of, in productivity terms. Over a period of 30 years, this village and the area around has urbanised somewhat, and has been turned into a pollution hothouse with excruciating consequences for the local people.

Bleak future

most of Iraq's farms are in a bad state, says the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation ( fao ). The famous fertile fields of Mesopotamia's have been ruined due to international sanctions and government neglect.

Going overboard with development?

the Union ministry of environment and forests ( mef ), has initiated a multi-institutional project to study the environmental impact due to development in Kochi, the harbour city of Kerala. The study, scheduled to be finished by the year 2000, will be followed by specific management plans for critical areas.

Popular poisons

the ever-increasing pressure to increase food production to meet current demand requires protection of crops from pests. The use of pesticides is, therefore, inevitable, and constitutes an integral part of modern crop-management practices. It has been estimated that crop damage is as high as 20 per cent where pesticides are not used.