-Economic and Political Weekly   Much work remains to be done if the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act has to mark a meaningful shift for India's adivasi communities. Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) is a multimedia journalist and researcher, and currently with the Publics and Policies program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Among the worst excesses committed in India's six decade-old democracy, the forcible displacment...

-The United Nations With the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) looming, United Nations officials today called on countries to accelerate action to meet the global targets that have spurred the fastest reduction of poverty in human history. "With less than 830 days to go before the MDG target date, now is the time to accelerate progress - not give up," said the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Helen...

-The Hindu That one-third of the food produced annually for human consumption is wasted is in itself unconscionable in a world where 870 million, or one in eight people, go hungry every day. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report now says that this high volume of wastage that occurs right through the food supply chain exerts an adverse impact on land, water, biodiversity and climate change. This impact...

-The Telegraph Three of the nine experts assigned the job of saving the Ganga resigned from a high-powered central body today, voicing their frustration at being kept out of the loop and the "furious pace" of clearing projects they had repeatedly opposed. In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chairs the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), the three said the government had not convened a single meeting of the...

-FAO Direct economic costs of $750 billion annually - Better policies required, and "success stories" need to be scaled up and replicated Rome: The waste of a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year is not only causing major economic losses but also wreaking significant harm on the natural resources that humanity relies upon to feed itself, says a new FAO report. Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources is the first...