Harnessing people’s power for climate action

As people join hands to increase awareness on climate change and call for action to reduce its impacts, we need to vouch for local solutions that …

News Briefs

Time to nail pesticides

Centre forms expert committee to frame policy to check residues in fruits, vegetables

Fungal scab attack can spell doom for Kashmir’s apple growers this year

Early, intense snowfall in November 2019 & a wet monsoon produced conditions for outbreak; lockdown abated it; farmers blame …

World Health Assembly: WHO to develop surveillance systems, robust database to track chemicals that impact health

Report on impact of the linkages between chemicals, pollution, waste and human health to be submitted before 6th UNEA next year

Science and Technology - Briefs

Bhopal to Germany

Airlifting Union Carbide waste requires amending Indian law, violates Basel Convention

Secretive tribunals, hidden damages

Canadian academic Gus Van Harten is well known for his efforts to reform the global investment treaty regime through his research papers, …

India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable

Senior international lawyer Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, who heads the investment programme of the International Institute on Sustainable …

Dahej blast: 3 dead, 32 injured in chemical factory accident

The number of casualties is expected to rise as many victims have received 70 per cent burn injuries  

Letters

Dahej blast: Experts call for utmost safety in operating industries after lockdown

Since the workforce running industrial units has changed post-lockdown, accidents can happen, they said  

Chemicals in daily use products cause as much pollution as vehicles: study

A study conducted in 33 industrial cities in Europe and the US shows that chemicals in pesticides, adhesives, cleaning agents and personal care …

Pesticide-rich food

Agriculture department confirms high pesticide residues

Poison on the plate

Study links toxins in food products to cancer and other diseases in children

Earth links

Organic livestock farming: A revolution in the making

Ensuring a profound balance in the functionalities between the organic suppliers and the global market might just turn out to be most influential …

Letters

India’s agrarian distress: How dissent has been on the rise

At least 50 major protests were reported across 20 Indian states in 9 months between January and September 2020

Tracking locust attack: Jaipur firemen go the extra mile to resist invasion

Officials destroy huge swarm of locusts that had taken residence at Mahar Kalan in Karanpur village

Sri Lanka’s agriculture department criticised for promoting pesticides

The department promotes toxic pesticides, fertilisers of multinationals despite kidney disease link, allege analysts

Letters

Promoting millets: the wheel need not be reinvented

New policy could be detrimental to millet farming

Synthetic pesticide use is on the decline; bio-pesticide use is up

Pesticides consumption in India is less than 1 kg/ha as against 4.5 kg/ha in USA and 11 kg/ha in Japan; Parliament panel recommends price control …

Supreme Court allows endosulfan export

Exports to be routed through public sector undertaking Hindustan Insecticides and two other companies