The shipbreakers of Alang are an exasperated lot. "As it is we are crippled by excise duty and competition. Then these Greenpeace activists make business tough for us. Shipbreaking falls under 32 government departments. How are we supposed to operate,' says R K Jain, operator of a ship breaking plot and an ancillary steel rolling mill in Alang.<br>
Every day, the country's numerous hospitals and medical facilities churn out millions of tonnes of waste. An alarming percentage of this waste lies in the open, like festering sores on civilisation's body, as breeding grounds of lethal virulences and
US's Democrats and Republicans break common bread over the fairness, or otherwise, of the Regulatory Reform Bill that could make industry accountable for the phenomenal fouling of America
A United Nations conference reveals the sense of desperate urgency concerning the oceans' rapidly depleting fish stocks
The mercurial success -- and equally rapid collapse -- of Germany"s package recycling system is forcing a rethink on waste management policy
#1 Who is the polluter? What is their waste-typology? This is the first critical and often make-or-break step. Get the property rights regime wrong and it is clear that nothing will work, is the
A skirmish over fishing rights threatens to scuttle diplomatic relations between Canada and the European Community
Some common misconceptions that emerged during the run up to Rio
Geological records of how climate responded to changes in the atmosphere in the past enables scientists to model future climate behaviour in response to current atmospheric changes
The Earth's atmosphere has been evolving ever since the planet was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. But, with industrialisation, human activity, for the first time, threatens irreversible climate changes
The NGO movement in South Asia has come a long way in the past 10 years. Last month, a panel discussion between some of them emphasised introspection and self-repair
Ten winters since methyl isocyanate exhaled history"s deadliest industrial disaster on Bhopal, action on toxicity remains agonisingly inadequate. India needs the technical knowledge of the Western world. Union Carbide recently made available its vast scie
A weak environmental regime in Brazil allows free rein to Asian logging companies to plunder through the Amazon forests
Our position is that USA is the biggest culprit in the world. ---Environment minister Kamal Nath on the eve of his departure to Rio We cannot permit the extreme in the environmental
For many southern groups, the greater cause at Rio was to align with their governments against the West's "green imperialism"
In the year of UNCED, the green movement continued to take tosses in the global context. The perception of the environmental crisis as mainly being a failure of technology and management was only one obstacle. Even more disastrous, UNCED paved the way for
Fiscal incentives for the middle class would help mobilise Indian money for NGOs. They would not have to depend on foreign funds
Gujarat industrialists are building a site to dump toxic wastes in Nandesari. The plans of the landfill, however, are severely flawed and it could soon lead to a major ecological disaster in the state. MANISH TIWARi reports from Vacloclara
UNCED saw the largest ever gathering of heads of government in history. Ceremony, glitter and pomp were played out against a backdrop of demonstrations, haggling and scandal. The Down to Earth team, which witnessed the entire pageant, records its impres
After the proposed Nylon 6,6 plant in Goa was discussed threadbare and opposed by many, the Greens succeeded in having the project shifted out
