John Vidal, who was in Rio for the '92 Earth summit, looks back at that momentous event, and how the 2012 version compares Helicopters thundered up and down the chic Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. Tanks guarded the bridges and tunnels. The favelas were in lockdown, schools closed and supermarkets stood empty. Unexpectedly, George H W Bush, the 41st US president, flush with success at the collapse of communism, had arrived in...
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At Rio+20 environmental summit, is 'catastrophe' inevitable?-Scott Baldauf
-The Christian Sciences Monitor Wealthy Western nations are financially exhausted and unwilling to commit to help fund greener development for poorer nations. Will this week's conference in Rio find any solutions? So what happens if you hold a UN conference on sustainable development, and world leaders make speeches, and sign treaties, and then nothing happens? This, of course, would be absurd. The problem, says Bill Easterly, a development expert at New York University,...
More »Endosulfan detoxification begins
-The Hindu Operation Blossom Spring first taken up at Periye Authorities started the process of detoxifying endosulfan stocked in three warehouses of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala here on Sunday. Operation Blossom Spring was first taken up at the warehouse at Periye, transferring 914.55 litres of the pesticide in six corroded barrels to high-density polyethylene barrels. A team of personnel from Hindustan Insecticide Ltd. and the Kerala State Pollution Control Board and medical experts...
More »Stalling Uttarkashi hydel projects may hit villages
-The Pioneer We have to climb daily for 3 km across the hills on foot from our village in Uttarkashi district in Uttarakhand to Dodra Kwar village on Himachal border just to charge mobile set”, says Satrama, woman from Pujeli village in Uttarakhand. Her village is one of those 1,220 villages in hills of Uttarkashi that continues to grope in the dark since the past three years. The villagers are vociferously protesting...
More »To know, is to protect-Madhav Gadgil and Ligia Noronha
A scientific and public scrutiny of the methodology used by the expert panel will only add to the efforts to save the Western Ghats. On May 23, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) posted the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) on its website honouring a landmark judgment of the Central Information Commission triggered by an activist seeking access to the material. In this judgment, the CIC...
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