Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...

Bina Agarwal , director and professor of economics, Institute of Economic Growth, has written a pioneering new book, Gender and Green Governance, that explores a central question: If women had adequate representation in forestry institutions, would it make a difference to them, their communities and forests as a national resource? Pamela Philipose spoke to Agarwal: Why has access to forests been such a conflict-ridden issue? This is not surprising. Forests constitute not...

In a major revision of the policy for rehabilitation & resettlement of landowners framed in 2005, the Haryana government has almost doubled the land acquisition rates in Gurgaon and substantially increased those in other parts of the state. Announcing this at a Press conference here today, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that Haryana has been divided into five zones - instead of the earlier three - for the purpose...

Denmark (Rank 1) Denmark along with two other countries have been ranked as the world's least corrupt countries. With a score of 9.3, Denmark has consistently topped the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. The country has a strong tradition of openness to global trade and investment, and transparent and efficient regulations are applied evenly in most cases. Denmark also boasts an efficient, independent judiciary that protects property rights, and the level of corruption is...

After nearly two decades of debate, governments from around the world today agreed to a new United Nations treaty on managing the planet’s wealth of genetic resources – from animals to plants to fungi – more fairly and systematically. The decision came on the last day of the two-week conference of parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan. The new pact, which is a protocol to the...