-Outlook After a row over implementation of a expert committee report, the Centre has ruled out appointment of any more panel to study Western Ghats in an attempt to address concerns of the six states through which the ecologically-sensitive hills traverse. Environment Minister M Veerappa Moily said the states concerned should appoint committees respectively to assess the kind of activities that could be allowed in the tract. After the committees submit their...
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India is still a hunger hotspot -Arvind Virmani and Charan Singh
-The Hindu Business Line Malnutrition, lack of clean water and prevalence of poor sanitation are the main causes of high child mortality in India. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) was released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Welt Hunger Hilfe (WHH) recently. According to the GHI, the world has made some progress in reducing hunger since the early 1990s and the millennium development Goal of halving the share of...
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-The Hindu The decision of the Ministry of Environment and Forests to revalidate the environmental clearance issued to South Korean steelmaker Posco for the proposed steel plant in Odisha is based on a piecemeal approach, rather than a comprehensive and cumulative assessment of all parts of the project. It cannot claim to rely on sound judgment. What distinguishes the proposal from the welter of projects before the Ministry is its...
More »Mission to cut neonatal deaths
-The Hindu Goa and Manipur may have knocked Kerala off the pedestal, but at 12 deaths among children less than one year of age per 1,000 live births, Kerala still has an enviably low infant mortality rate (IMR); it is far below India's average of 42. Yet, for years, the southern State has been unable to reduce the mortality rate further to a single-digit figure to become comparable with the...
More »How to feed nine billion people, and feed them well -Zareen Bharucha
-The Conversation Resource-intensive agriculture, despite its productivity, nevertheless has failed to feed the world's current population, never mind the nine billion people expected by 2050. This system that currently fails both people and planet is ripe for revision. We need to be more ambitious, to go beyond simply producing more. We need to produce more of what's good - not just cereal staples, but nutrition-dense foods - in ways that can prevent...
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