-Down to Earth An ecologist has been guarding seeds of more than 750 rare rice varieties for over a decade Lit by a kerosene lamp, the two-room hut just outside a sleepy hamlet in Odisha’s Rayagada district can easily pass off as any other farmer’s house in this tribal region. Step inside it, and one is taken aback by the hundreds of earthen pots labelled with coded stickers stacked in a corner...

-The United Nations Massive stores of carbon trapped under the northern hemisphere’s frozen expanses risk being unleashed and significantly contributing to global warming should thawing of the region’s permafrost continue to accelerate, a United Nations report warned today. Released on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference in the Qatari capital of Doha, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report – Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost – underlines the potential hazards facing...

-Reuters   The world's urban areas will more than double in size by 2030, presenting an opportunity to build greener and healthier cities, a UN study showed on Monday.   Simple planning measures such as more parks, trees or roof gardens could make cities less polluted and help protect plants and animals, especially in emerging nations led by China and India where city growth will be fastest, it said. "Rich biodiversity can exist in cities...

-Outlook Hyderabad: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today unveiled a robust environmental strategy to address unprecedented levels of global biodiversity loss. The new strategy - entitled 'The Future We Want: Biodiversity and ecosystems -- Driving Sustainable Development' -- was released during the ongoing 11th Conference of Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity here. It calls for a significant scaling up of investments in 100 countries by 2020, UNDP said in...

-Outlook Hyderabad: The next generation of biodiversity models across the world could emerge from the knowledge of existing approaches in India, a new United Nations Development Programme report said today. The UNDP report calls for adopting a "landscape approach" to bio-diversity governance which will allow a range of ecosystems and not just the smaller protected parts of it to thrive. On the basis of a detailed review of prevalent bio-diversity management models in...