-AFP   A French court on Monday found US agro giant Monsanto legally responsible for the poisoning of a farmer with one of its herbicides in 2004, in a verdict that could have global implications.  "Monsanto is responsible for Paul Francois's suffering after he inhaled the Lasso product ... and must entirely compensate him," said the judgement from the court in the southeastern city of Lyon.  "This concerns farmers around the world," said the...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

There were fresh calls on Thursday for an independent inquiry into Dow Chemical's controversial sponsorship of the London Olympics after Meredith Alexander, a leading environmentalist, resigned from the Games' ethics committee — the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 — protesting against Dow's links with the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster and accusing the organisers of “toeing” the company's line. “I feel that the Commission and the London Games organisers are in...

Facing criticism over project delays, the government has decided to get cracking and set up a dedicated forum to remove bottlenecks such as coal linkages and environmental and defence clearances that hold up projects.  Top government officials told TOI that following the meeting of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade & Industry last month, the department of industrial policy and promotion has been asked to identify projects and remove bottlenecks in...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...