The upsurge in the use of the toxic pesticide endosulfan, targeted for prohibition by the international community, illustrates one of the dilemmas of intensive agriculture in Argentina and Latin America in general. "There is always a natural solution," insists farmer Alicia Alem, a member of an Argentine cooperative that produces cereal and forage crops without chemical fertilisers or pesticides. "In terms of wheat, for example, the cooperative gets exactly the same yield...

As joint owners of the national response to HIV/AIDS, civil society groups have called upon the government to take proactive steps to meaningfully involve civil society in all aspects of conceptualisation, design, planning and implementation of National AIDS Control Programme-IV. They also want the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to put in place transparent mechanisms to inform civil society of the process in the run-up to the planning and development...

An insecticide widely used in agriculture for pest control has become the latest hazardous chemical to be added to the United Nations’ list of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) targeted for elimination from the global market by next year, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today. Representatives from 127 governments meeting in Geneva from 25 to 29 April agreed to add endosulfan, an organochlorine insecticide, to the POPs list because it is...

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and all the States on a petition for a nationwide ban on endosulfan, given the pesticide's harmful effect on the people. A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar issued the notice on the petition filed by the Democratic Youth Federation of India, after hearing senior counsel Krishnan Venugopal. It asked Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam to...

Joint drafting panel on Lokpal Bill holds second meeting; public consultations after agreement on basic principles In the second round of discussions in the joint drafting committee on the Lokpal Bill here on Monday, members of civil society invoked the United Nations Convention on Corruption to stress that the underlying principle of the anti-corruption law should be to have an independent body that covers the highest executive and the judiciary. The...