-Outlook The aim of achieving food security across the globe will become increasingly elusive unless countries take into account the planet's nature-based services into agricultural and related planning, said a report released by the United Nations Environment Programme today. Safeguarding the underlying ecological foundations that support food production, including biodiversity will be central if the world is to feed the seven billion people, climbing to over nine billion by 2050, according to...

-The Hindu Intelligent management of ecosystems can help to turn local economies around and give destitute households a chance to increase their incomes Protecting biodiversity is humanity’s insurance policy against the unprecedented Biodiversity Loss and ecosystem degradation which has occurred in recent decades, undermining the very foundations of life on earth. This is why this week’s 11th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Hyderabad, which India is hosting, is...

-The Hindu Ecosystem restoration and relationship between biodiversity and climate change to be discussed The difficult task of mobilising financial resources for achieving biodiversity targets expeditiously became the running theme at the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), represented by over 170 countries, which began here on Monday. Union Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who assumed charge as president of COP-11 for...

-The Hindu “Environmental impact assessment tends to ignore wider impact on biodiversity” In a move that will bring cheer to wildlife lovers but could dismay industry lobbyists already complaining about the difficulty in obtaining green clearances, the government plans to add biodiversity conservation as a new criterion to grant environmental and forest clearances. “There is no biodiversity clearance till now,” admitted Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, speaking ahead of the United Nations summit...

-The Hoot Buried in a parliamentary committee report is a refutation by villagers of TOI’s controversial stories on BT cotton’s virtues, published in 2008 and reprinted in the paper as paid news in 2011. PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA revisits the saga  Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this...