The plight of the hungry in developing countries is needlessly aggravated by farmers losing up to half of their crops after gathering the harvest, the United Nations agricultural agency said today, stressing that adequate investment and training could drastically cut the losses. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that excessive rainfall, droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination by micro-organisms, and premature harvesting are among the causes of these post-harvest losses, which...

Energy security is a major objective of all countries. Some are proactive and aggressive in this pursuit, like China; others like India are slow and procrastinate on major decisions and allow hope to overtake realistic assessments. This makes energy security in the foreseeable future an uncertain goal for India. Any discussion of energy security must keep in mind the Indian realities. Although in overall terms of commercial energy use to...

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has brought out an excellent compilation titled Climate Change, Politics and Facts. The government is planning legislation with targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps to bolster this, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has published results of five studies - NCAER/Jadavpur, TERI/MoEF, IRADE, TERI/Poznan and McKinsey - and findings have been contrasted and collated by CSE. As per all these models except for TERI/Poznan,...

As we approach the global summit on climate change in December 2009 in Copenhagen, critical concerns are likely to emerge. Both the United Nations conference last week and the subsequent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh left several issues somewhat ambiguous. While the United States spoke of reduction in its emissions, these remain insignificant. At the G-20 meet, leaders stated that they would "intensify efforts to reach an agreement at Copenhagen and...

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2009–Developing countries can shift to lower-carbon paths while promoting development and reducing poverty, but this depends on financial and technical assistance from high-income countries, says a new World Bank report released today. High-income countries also need to act quickly to reduce their carbon footprints and boost development of alternative energy sources to help tackle the problem of climate change. World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change,...