Science and Technology - Briefs

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Making waves

India Inc’s new bogey

Auduth Timblo is the owner of Fomento Group, one of the largest mining and iron ore exporting corporations in Goa. Last week during a meeting in Lisbon to promote business relations between Goa and Portugal, Timblo blamed an “overworked and underpaid judiciary” and its “activism”, and “green tape” in Indian governance for halting Goa’s economic development.

Convention on biological diversity

cbd Page Teaser:  The forthcoming CBD conference in Hyderabad will discuss innovative ways of financing biodiversity from partnerships with business to payments for ecosystem services. Will this save the planet?

The hunt for benefits

Taking stock of biodiversity

Protect & profit

A promising pathway

Now that the Rio+20 summit is over, experts and the public at large have got busy analysing its outcome document. The media has already declared the conclave on sustainable development, held in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro between June 20 and 22, a failure.

Green rider for GDP

After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy.

Paying farmers for ecological services

MGNREGA 2.0 has the potential but its realisation needs course correction Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme is being refurbished as MGNREGA 2.0. Within two months, the country will have a rural employment programme that will pay people for the work they usually do for sustenance.

Biodiversity buffer

No free lunch for water projects

Freshwater has been the main fuel for human civilisations and economies. But unscientific overuse of rivers, lakes and groundwater aquifers has led to degradation of water bodies to such an extent that their ecosystem services are increasingly failing. The term “environmental flows” has come into circulation as a result of searches to reverse the situation.