-Press release by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) dated 18 May 2022 Geneva, 18 May 2022 (WMO): Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, with harmful and long-lasting ramifications for sustainable development and...

-Down to Earth New government report finds fewer indigenous individuals among these species, although experts blame non-registration of breeds as a reason. The origins of over half of India’s cattle, sheep, goats, horses, ponies, mules, donkeys and pigs are not known, according to a new report on the country’s livestock released by the government recently. The country’s water buffaloes too have fewer purebred individuals, although its camels still have that distinction according to...

-TheWire.in * The proposed Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill 2021 encourages a conducive environment for investments and to simplify the patent application process. * Farmers in India have historically been against any kind of IP rights – whether patents or plant variety protection over seed and planting materials. * In a confused mix of laws, the government also grants IP rights to BMCs for farmers’ varieties – formed under the Biological Diversity Act –...

-Livemint.com India’s lack of official data for estimates could impair policy formulation and thus hurt the economy Two different sets of poverty estimates for India were released recently. One of the papers was authored by Surjit Bhalla, Karan Bhasin, and Arvind Virmani and the second by Sutirtha Roy and Roy Weide, both affiliated to the World Bank. Both presented estimates for roughly the same period, after 2011-12, but ended up at starkly...

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...