World Water Day is held annually on March 22 to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and advocate sustainable management of freshwater resources. Each year, the day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater and this year's campaign was on “Water and Food Security.” A large quantity of water, more than most people think, is used for producing the food we eat everyday. Water is a renewable and finite resource...

-The Business Standard   Learning from the jatropha mistake The tropical shrub jatropha curcas, touted a decade ago as a commercially feasible source of biofuel to alleviate the global energy crisis, seems to have let its proponents down quite comprehensively. Millions of hectares of land in the arid areas of India and in many other Asian and African countries were turned into jatropha plantations in the expectation that the oil derived from its...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

-AFP Water problems in many parts of the world are chronic and without a crackdown on waste will worsen as demand for food rises and climate change intensifies, the UN warned on Sunday.  Issued on the eve of a six-day gathering on world water issues, the United Nations, in a massive report, said many daunting challenges lie ahead.  They include providing clean water and sanitation to the poor, feeding a world population set...

Renewable energy sources are attractive but in a sense, powerless. Maybe, someday we'll all live in houses with photovoltaic roof tiles but in the real world, a 1GW of solar plant will require 60 square miles of solar panels. When the demand increases, you can fire up more coal, but how will you cause the wind to blow and the sun to shine 24x7? The earth is already so disabled...