The crucial climate change summit to draw up a new plan to tackle global warming that will replace the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 will begin in Copenhagen on Monday. Though not much was expected to emerge at the end of the 12-day meet until recently, hopes of some kind of a consensus on a political commitment have been kindled with world leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, deciding to attend...

Good nutrition is the nexus point where food security, public health and environmental protection meet.  As world leaders in Copenhagen struggle for an ambitious deal, let us not forget that it is the future of our children that is at stake. Hurricanes, floods, heat-waves and droughts wreak havoc when they strike, but in the desolation they leave behind it’s relatively easy to reconstruct a road or a house. A human...

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Friday charged that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had in fact rubbished India’s consistent position on climate change and “endorsed the principle put forward by the developed world.” India gave in to the “bandwagon effect,” following China in announcing voluntary cuts in carbon emission intensity, not caring about the fact that its per capita emissions were far higher than India’s, he said. In any case,...

It is to counter the Danish draft that proposed tough action by developing countries Call for setting up of a Global Climate Fund The four emerging economies — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — have recommended the establishment of a mechanism to develop and transfer environment-friendly technology to developing countries, remove barriers in technology transfer and appropriately address issues of intellectual property rights. The BASIC draft proposed by these four developing...

The United Nations agency entrusted with accelerating sustainable industrial development in poorer states today pledged to help the world’s 49 least Developed Countries (LDCs), 33 of them in Africa, to withstand global financial crisis. “The global financial crisis is moving many LDCs into troubled waters with heightened risk to exports, investment, credit, banking systems, budgets, the balance of payments, and remittances, and, the most vulnerable are those countries which depend...