Is the joyride over ?
There was fear in the 1960s. Would India continue to wait for food imports to feed itself? The scientific community came up with an answer that …
Towards wetland conservation
The Union environment ministry has been working for the past four years to create a regulatory framework to protect the country’s wetlands. …
Takeover threat
State of the world 2002 (us $15.95), vital signs 2002 (us $14.95); eco-economy: building an economy for the earth, 2001 (us $14.95) .
"We are close to crisis point"
Agriculture and its subsequent effect on the environment, rapidly depleting natural resources like arable land and water, the slackening of the …
Kind to cash
The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on …
Investment terror
Since the 1990s developing nations have been on a treaty spree, signing a vast number of bilateral and regional investment treaties to attract …
Don't need subsidies, give us the right price
For most Indians, Mahendra Singh Tikait is the man who brought Delhi to its knees in 1988 with a rally that brought the national capital face to …
In search of the missing
In the undivided Koraput district of Orissa, there exist 190 villages that have slowly been pushed off the map of India. Hurled by fast-track …
Saving rice
Rice is at the heart of a fierce strategy debate as the country prepares to launch the second Green Revolution in the eastern states. …
The inside story
Bad health is good business. The pharmaceutical industry knows that. But now bad health is turning out to be good business for the food industry …
Solving poverty
Gurdev S Khush is the principal plant breeder in the Plant breeding, genetics and biochemistry division of the International Rice Research …
High Altitude Dilemma
It is an intriguing view from the high mountains of Bhutan. To the east lies Nepal, grappling large-scale environmental degradation. To the north …
SUBSIDISED KILLING
They may survive the drought. But they cannot survive government policies. When people have to abandon their livestock, they are reduced to misery,…
Deconstructing science
Nature uses lean sources to get work done. The environmental crises we face today are a result of ignoring this simple paradigm for two centuries.…
Science for ecology
Down To Earth and the Centre for Science and Environment announce the winner of the 2001 Green Scientist Award. In the exercise to rate the …
Lost in plantation
Millions of growers and workers are in distress in Kerala, the plantation capital of India, as domestic and international prices of cash crops …
The many ways of GM contamination
Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in the food and environment programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is among the most …
Flat in 20 days
Global climatic anomalies allied with local weather conditions produced the most freakish hailstorms in central and north India in February and …
Science under siege
Agricultural science has ossified in India. Despite a vast network of public research institutions and agriculture universities across the country,…
Future compromised
The Earth Summit was a historical opportunity to set the world on the correct development trajectory. Negotiators from 191 countries came …
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 …
Food standards save lives, say FAO and WHO on World Food Safety Day
An estimated 600 million or almost 1 in 10 people worldwide fall ill after eating contaminated food; 420,000 die every year
Why global food prices are higher today than for most of modern history
The drivers of average international food prices are always complicated. The prices of different commodities rise and fall based on universal …