Environment

The Draft National Water Policy 2012 (DNWP 2012) released by the government earlier this year sought to “take cognizance of the existing situation and to propose a framework for creation of an overarching system of … Read more

IT is now one year since the Fukushima disaster took place that saw three reactors in Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Dai-ichi nuclear plant suffering core melt-downs and explosions. On March 11,  2011, an earthquake … Read more

Finally, after many climate summits aimed at negotiating a global compact to succeed the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the seventeenth Conference of Parties (COP 17) at Durban has arrived at an agreement. … Read more

The climate summit in Copenhagen a year ago inspired many catchy nicknames starting with “hopenhagen” to portray early expectations that it would deliver a solution to the climate crisis, and later “nopenhagen” and the famous … Read more

THE horrific on-going disaster caused by oil spewing out from British Petroleum’s (BP) well in the Gulf of Mexico is going from bad to worse, showing little signs of abating. It is already by far … Read more

THE climate crisis and efforts to tackle it have witnessed unprecedented mobilisation of popular movements, NGOs, think tanks, experts, intellectuals and activists, as was evident at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen last December. Of course, … Read more

Earlier articles in these columns have shown how the odd careless remark, a few errors in judgment, a lapse in scientific rigour and peer review procedures, as happened over the clearly erroneous prediction that Himalayan … Read more

It seems even a day cannot go by without some newspaper, magazine or TV channel carrying an expose about yet another blunder by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On the eve of the … Read more

The Copenhagen Climate Conference has ended disastrously, the only saving grace being that things could have been even worse. People’s expectations that this meeting of world leaders would finalize a legally binding global arrangement to … Read more

More than two-thirds of the way through, with Ministers having already joined their negotiating teams and with heads of government starting to arrive for the final three days supposedly to seal an accord to save … Read more

As this piece goes to press, the Copenhagen Conference on climate change has begun. Predictably, the developed countries are up to their usual games, tabling outrageous proposals which they know will be unacceptable to the … Read more

The Copenhagen Conference starts today, with a stark choice facing the world. We either cut global carbon emissions soon, going to near zero by the end of the century or we are on a slippery … Read more