-The Hindu India says it is ready for a regime of stocktaking of future carbon emissions. In a clear signal that active diplomacy is at work to forge an agreement in Paris based on voluntary pledges, one that is subject to transparent monitoring, India said on Friday that it was ready for a regime of stocktaking of future carbon emissions. The U.S., on its part, said it had “nothing but respect” for...
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WTO skips India on food security
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) draft declaration for next month's ministerial meeting in Nairobi made no mention of finding a permanent solution to India's concerns on food security, but promised to "address all aspects of agriculture reform as a matter of priority". The first draft for the meeting in mid-December, however, did take note of the failure of the WTO membership to reach an agreement on...
More »Hand-Washing and Public Health -Lekha D Bhat, Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar, Hisham Moosan, Sanjeev Nair, and Muhammed Shaffi
-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...
More »To subsidise or not: All you need to know about food security -B Sundaresan
-Hindustan Times Commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the WTO will have to give a permanent solution to India’s food security issue. HT explains. * What has WTO got to do with food security? The World Trade Organisation was established in 1995 to facilitate trade among members, who now number at 161. The WTO facilitates trade through rounds of negotiations — there have been nine rounds till now, the latest being the...
More »India to press for equity at climate talks -G Ananthakrishnan
-The Hindu India’s strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and poor nations. Two major issues that New Delhi will focus on at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are failed ambitions on transferring low...
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