In response to growing frustration that the U.N. climate negotiations are not producing real-world results, individual nations, states and business are cobbling together patchwork solutions to preserve forests, produce clean energy and scrub pollution from the air.Under this new approach, businesses in California will offset their greenhouse gas emissions by funding tropical forest preservation in Mexico and Brazil; Japan will help pay for nuclear power plants in developing nations; and...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

NIIRA RADIA — owner of PR company Vaishnavi Communications, among others — is not merely a fixer in the old sense of the word. She is a thermometer reading for a very ill society. In April this year, a clutch of mysterious documents had made their way to several media houses. At face value the documents seemed a synopsis of phone conversations between Niira — a powerful lobbyist for Mukesh...

State-owned trading firm MMTC Ltd, the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (Iffco) and the conglomerate Bharti Enterprises plan to join the growing number of Indian entities engaged in commercial farming in Africa. Cheap land and labour costs in Africa are attracting a number of Indian firms with interest in agriculture. A large number of people in East African countries such as Kenya work in the cultivation of tea, coffee, corn, vegetables, sugarcane,...

The government has launched a relief package, which will directly address the problems of the coffee growers, especially the small growers. Commerce and industry minister today flagged off the implementation of the `coffee Debt Relief Package, 2010' by distributing the first batch of certificates to those small coffee growers whose loans have been waived under this package. This is the first time that the Government of India has come forward with...