Environment

Can you be liable for damages if you didn't mean to do it? Can the pollution laws of one country be enforced in another? When it comes to politics and the environment, laws really only count when they are on your side, as we saw when Germans ironically declared it wrong for an American to dump iron dust in the ocean for a geo-engineering experiment, yet the same loophole was completely ethical when they did it three years ago. Americans in the state of Washington are not happy that Canadians are dumping all of their pollution in the US and don't want to pay the $1 billion it will cost to…

I had a chance to witness plant conservation sites in Sweden, Japan  Germany and India. Almost all the plant species are conserved in cold storage , in liquid nitrogen, and in different methods of storage so that if mankind looses all plants on earth in the event of some circumstances of floods or man made devastations the life can be started again. Although we don't envisage a threat of nuclear war now but  it was so much in the air just 4 decades ago  that plant storage facilities were made to withstand even atomic attacks. In that event all life has to be started afresh and…

Hyderabad conference on biodiversity is excellent opportunity on resource mobilisation.  With  over 180 participating countries  Prime Minister of India hopes for a "positive outcome". India became the first champion of the Hyderabad pledge to announce US $50 million ( Rs. 250 crore) to strengthen biodiversity institutions within India and abroad on Tuesday(HT 17th October, 2012) . United Kingdom became second country a day later by announcing one million pounds for implementation of Aichi targets under Nagoya Protocol of the Convention of Biological Diversity…

Greenland has areas of very clean water, the like of which just does not exist in developed nations, but also highly polluted water, making it an excellent location for studying the environmental impacts of chemicals More than 10,000 tons of antibiotics are consumed in Europe each year and an estimated 30-60% of those pass through animals and humans completely unchanged. These different substances can then reach the ocean via hospitals, municipal sewage, fish farms and run-off from agriculture and landfills. A research group from the University of Gothenburg wanted to examine the potential…

A recent study published in Environmental Sciences Europe has attracted attention because it documents a net increase in pesticide use on genetically engineered crops in the US.  The author, Chuck Benbrook, is certainly qualified to consider pesticide issues, and I have had positive interactions with him over the years; however as an organic advocate he has a very different perspective on pesticides than I do.  Chuck is certainly not alone in his assumption that pesticide use is, by definition, something undesirable.  That is an assumption that deserves to be challenged.…

A new study says that the use of herbicides in the production of three genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops, cotton, soybeans and corn, has gone up rather than down. The counterintuitive estimate is based on an analysis of publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agriculture Statistics Service.  Washington State University professor Charles Benbrook says this estimate is the first peer-reviewed estimate of the impacts of genetically engineered herbicide-resistant crops on pesticide use. Herbicide-resistant and insect-resistant crops have…

"Sustainable agriculture" is as  articulated in the 1990"Farm Bill" Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990,P.L. 101-624, Title XVI, Subtitle A, Section 1603) sustainable agriculture means "an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term: (A) satisfy human food and fiber needs; (B) enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends; (C) make the most efficient use of non renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate,where appropriate…

In his book  Essay on population Malthus’s 1798 predicted  that  population growth will soon outpace food production. Ecologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968  wrote in his book: The Population Bomb predicted that the world will undergo famines in 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.  It is too late!!! It did not happen.  However  by some surprise or scientific achievements this did not   happen  but to say it will  never happen will be far from truth.  Wars are…

The word "pesticide" conjures up negative, scary images. These images come from old organophosphate insecticides of the 1960s that killed fish and birds and caused farm worker illness.  These are sorely outdated images. What most people don't know is how much safer the new generations of pesticides are.  In fact, scores of old materials have been withdrawn from the market or banned long ago.  The new products are mostly compounds with extremely low mammalian toxicity and benign environmental profiles.  Today's pesticides are not your grandfather's or even…

Starting from point mutations and gene mutations to chromosomal aberrations , molecular markers, to cultivars, species and genera and phyla, all living organisms make biodiversity of an area. The soil is most important component to support numerous microbes, fungi and bacteria  which live in symbiotic relationships with plants. Soil pH, cropping pattern, standing plants on the soil , and ecological successions of a given area will determine suitability of the habitat. The Himalayas are fragile ecosystems and most vulnerable to climatic changes. It is very important to identify and…