This is a collection of 45 select articles written by M.S. Swaminathan over the past 20 years. Arranged in six sections, they cover ‘sustainable development in Indian agriculture', ‘technology and evergreen revolution', ‘sustainable food security', ‘agrarian crisis', ‘WTO and Indian farmers', and ‘shaping India's agricultural destiny'. As Jeffrey Sachs says in his foreword, Swaminathan had “recognised already in the early days of India's green revolution that the new breakthroughs could create...

India today slammed the US and other parties to the Copenhagen Accord for failing to deliver "fast track" financial obligations to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and other nations facing the risk of climate change. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said the United States and other parties to the Copenhagen Accord had agreed to raise USD 30 billion for helping poor nations most at risk of climate change. "The continued inability to deliver on...

An estimated 75 per cent of the world’s coral reefs are threatened by local human activity, including over-fishing, coastal development and pollution, and global pressures such as climate change, warming seas and rising ocean acidification, according to a United Nations-backed report unveiled today. “Reefs at Risk Revisited,” launched today in Washington and London, says that if the threats to the reefs are not dealt with, more than 90 per cent of...

Fifty million "environmental refugees" will flood into the global north by 2020, fleeing food shortages sparked by climate change, experts warned at a major science conference that ended here Monday. "In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees," University of California, Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). "When people are...

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has initiated a programme to improve global information on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and accurately assess farming’s potential to mitigate global warming. The improved data acquired by the FAO Mitigation of climate change in Agriculture (MICCA) programme, which will receive $5 million in funding from Germany and Norway, will be made available via an online global knowledge base that will profile greenhouse...