The ‘Aichi Target' adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at its Nagoya conference could not have come at a more appropriate time. The journal Science recently published a study by Michael Hoffmann and his colleagues titled “The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World's Vertebrates.” This presents depressing data on threatened species. The scientists conclude that four important factors — agricultural expansion, logging, over-exploitation, and invasive...

The Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr. Jacques Diouf, announced at the Inter-Governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that the combination of global food crisis and economic recession had taken the number of people affected across the world to over one billion. He described the number as “unacceptably high,” higher than in 1996 when the heads of states and governments committed themselves to reducing hunger by...

Striking workers at Foxconn India in Sriperumbudur near Chennai take on the corporate giant, demanding better wages. WORKERS at Foxconn-India in Sriperumbudur in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, have been on strike from September 24 demanding better wages. They also want the reinstatement of 24 suspended colleagues and the withdrawal of an eight-day wage cut slapped on some workers. That they have held out for so long is remarkable, not least...

The forthcoming India visit of the US President, Mr Barack Obama, accompanied by Mr Thomas J. Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, and Dr Rajiv Raj Shah, administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is significant in the context of strengthening the Indo-US partnership in the field of agriculture production and sustainable food security. Several related issues will be discussed in Mumbai on November 6 and November 7 where an agriculture...

A three-member team of experts, headed by economist Bibek Debroy, began its job of mapping a growth path of politically unstable Jharkhand today by meeting chief minister Arjun Munda and discussing the contours of a state development report. Working on a three-month time frame, Debroy, who was approached by Munda to take up the assignment, said his meeting with the chief minister was productive. “He has given us some thoughts to work...