Rocking for the Earth

Beyond home

Bill Clinton's absence from the Copenhagen summit on social development underscores the post-Cold War parochialism that has gripped the American …

Time to put away the begging bowls

Heart to heart

A tongue-in-cheek report of a conversation overheard at a bar during a meeting of the Commission for Sustainable Development.

Have we forgotten Rio already?

India has failed in the basic work that it needed to do even before going to Rio -- define the pathway of sustainable development for itself

And miles to go before we meet

The North-South divide is not a fabrication: for three-fourths of the world, it is a fact of daily existence. Ignoring it will not make it …

Let's get political

The environmental movement is politically weak. That is the lesson from the Rio summit

All for the people

International organisations concentrating on the moral and material uplift of the underpriviledged

Towards a global anti-poverty convention

No taking cheap Colombian coal to Newcastle

John Major's Conservative government is learning the hard way that a free market economy alway works better anywhere but at home.

Speaking for the people

Rio saw the largest ever gathering of NGOs -- over 2,000 of them. And finally the world was forced to acknowledge that NGOs were the real voice …

Sands of controversy

Africa had several tense moments before it could get the desertification convention through

Nothing gained, but nothing lost either

The glitz at UNCED was very impressive -- over 100 heads of government gathered together to thrash out environment politics. But the results were …

Responsibility in a unified world

Lifegiving venture

Patchwork economics

Is a free trade area for the Americas "band-aid-types" solution?

Planetary politics

We live in a world where nobody wishes to yield an inch

An identity crisis for the South

The developing world needs to define what the South represents, for otherwise it risks its legitimacy as a negotiating bloc

Time for Green from the ground up

The show is over. It's time to stop talking and get down to work

A handful of aces for the North

Global environmental concerns throw open the South to Northern intervention, whereas the South has limited interest in intervening in Northern …

Off to the next round

The South came back reasonably victorious from Rio, it was only because of the poor leadership of USA. The question now is: will it be able to …

The global green farce

At UNCED the inclustrialised countries do not want any serloys restructuring of their economies or their lifestyles to save the earth. But the …

Rio's Stepchild

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification is a non-starter. Administrative and financial matters get the better of any serious attempts to deal …

Space Race 2.0: Are we aliens?

There is a theory that says life could have intergalactic origin

Rewards from Rio: A year later