"Sometimes, cost is not at all an issue"
The World Bank pumps in US $1 billion into Asia for environmental purposes every year. In India, the bank has been financing projects to control …
Pesticides are wiping out cranes
George Archibald , director, International Crane Foundation (ICF), USA, has been a regular visitor to Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Bharatpur. In …
‘Predictions wrong, but give indications’
India Meteorological Department is often accused of making incorrect predictions. The Ministry of Earth Sciences regularly gets funds to …
We have robbed the soil of its nutrients
P N TAKKAR former director of the Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, and currently principal scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research …
Financing emissions from jets and cows
Environmental scientist Robert Goodland , who served the World Bank Group between 1978 and 2001 is credited with authoring some of the Bank's …
'Developing countries are treated in a very unfair manner'
Bernarditas Muller, a seasoned member of the Philippines negotiating team, is among the rare few who call a spade a spade. Speaking to Indrajit …
Idea of farmer wisdom is relentlessly manipulated
As a visiting American academic, Glenn Davis Stone has put in over 60 weeks of field research on the impact of Bt cotton on farmers in Andhra …
Report on GM crops unfortunate: industry
The parliamentary committee on agriculture has strongly criticised the regulatory system on genetically modified (GM) crops in the country, …
Architect M N Sharma on why Chandigarh's beauty is becoming history
Le Corbusier Foundation, Paris, plans to put Chandigarh in UNESCO's modern heritage list. M N Sharma, the first architect to work with Le …
"Nature is not loved in India"
HARISH GAONKAR took his childhood passion for butterflies seriously enough to carve out an illustrious career in lepidopterology for himself. A …
Biotechnology assures leap in production
Tissue culture can change the face of agriculture, asserts Ajit Thomas, who heads a firm that has gone in a big way for biotechnology …
I hate scavenging, but what else can I do?
Rameshwari has been working as a scavenger in the pilgrim town of Ajmer in Rajasthan for the last 15 years. She abhors her work, yet she does it …
"I am neither here, nor there"
Young Saif Ali is one of a handful of bhanyara (nomadic) Gujjars of northern Himachal Pradesh who attend college. But education has led him into …
'India way ahead in tackling waste'
PAUL CONNET, professor at the Chemistry department, St Lawrence University, New York, has toured 29 countries in the last 11 years, educating …
'Values of our society lead to disaster'
In 1972, Dennis Meadows had co-authored the well-known report, Limits to Growth, along with Donella Meadows and Jorgen Randers. Recently, the …
I will not work for any company, big or small
Until recently, 14-year-old Daham was just another child carpet weaver. When he left his Bihar village to find work in UP's Mirzapur district, he …
"We are starved of funds"
KALYAN BANERJEE, director of the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune, speaks to MAX MARTIN about the emergence and re-emergence of viral …
The model man
Whether it is his well-known monsoon model or his new population model, Vasant Gowarikar enjoys defying the classical definitions of a specialist.…
North overconsumes resources, but efficiently
Friends of the Earth (FOE) in Netherlands has been fighting unsustainable lifestyles in the world's affluent societies by campaigning vigorously …
Indian farmers can take on the multinationals
Sharad Joshi, the well-known, controversial farm leader from Maharashtra, outlines a new strategy for agriculture.
'Orangi is not unique, I am'
Akhtar Hameed Khan is one of Asia's foremost social organisers. The Orangi Pilot Proiect, Karachi's outstanding slum development programme, …
National parks are luxury in Third World
KRISHNA B Ghimire, who is a project coordinator with the UN Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, has done extensive research on …
Gene transfer yields pest-resisting rice strain
Darshan S Brar, who has been working for years on rice hybrids at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, talks about gene …
Making science, technology serve the people
For R S Hegde, a primary school principal and rural technologist, science is useless if it remains confined to labs and libraries.
Waste is being dumped in Russia
Galina Sdasyuk is a researcher at the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, and is formulating a sustainable model of …