Expensive shortcuts: mining
Investors have welcomed the dilution in government regulations that currently require companies to seek the consent of local communities for industrial projects in tribal areas. We analyse the outcome of this development.
Courtesy: Spenta Multimedia
Taking Doordarshan global
News channels like China’s CCTV, Russia Today and Al-Jazeera have become definitive voices for their nations and for international views. Now, with the Modi government on a public messaging and public realations spree, it is the right time to re-configure our public broadcaster, Doordarshan, to showcase India’s growing global ties and the success of its democracy to the world.
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
The UN and sustainability
The UN and the global finance industry are making gradual but concerted efforts to align business interests and ecological sustainability. A growing number of companies are combining profit-making with social responsibility. There is still a long way to go, but the UN system has created useful mechanisms of change
Courtesy: MEA
China and the green impetus
China’s president Xi Jinping revealed his South Asia foreign policy plans and initiatives on this trips around the region. Though China has a lot to offer, will it factor in green goals while implementing its outreach programs and policies?
Courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org
Development and extinction
A recent report highlights the drastic damage being caused to the environment by human activity and underlines the need to address this. A warning that environmental groups advising the new government in India must pay heed to.
Courtesy: MEA photo gallery
Exploring the ‘blue economy’
A blue economy needs to be looked at as an advanced version of environmental sustainability rather than as just a plan that helps towards the rapid development of island nations and others with vast coastlines
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
How climate change changed me
Climate change is a reality but most of us continue to live every day without acknowledging this fact or taking any action to ameliorate its effects. The author is of the opinion that every single human being needs to engage and understand this man-made phenomenon so that humanity is better prepared for its impact
Courtesy: IncMan/Wikimedia Commons
Re-evaluating rapid transport
India’s transport network has failed to keep pace with the ever-expanding cities. This has necessitated the import of alternatives such as the Bus Rapid Transit System. However, unless impediments like the absence of a dedicated corridor and lack of city planning are addressed, the project is destined to fail
Courtesy: Gateway House
Environmental diplomacy
Gateway House’s Shloka Nath examines the causes of disagreements between India and Bangladesh, and makes recommendations to resolve them – which can lead to an intelligent management and protection of the Sunderbans.
Letters from Budapest – a sludge in the Danube
An account of how Hungary handled the world’s worst environmental disaster since the Bhopal and Chernobyl gas tragedies which, at one stage threatened to ruin the Danube.