The Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Prof.
P. K. Abdul Azis has appointed a ten-member committee of senior teachers to
discuss the matter regarding the on-going dharna of students in front of the
Vice Chancellor’s Lodge with the seven student representatives who
participated in the meeting held on October 5. The exercise is meant to find
out an amicable solution to the issue relating to the agitation staged by a
group of students for the restoration of AMU Students’ Union.
The Dean, Faculty of Unani Medicine, Prof. Tajuddin has been appointed as
its Convener. The other members of the committee are Prof. S. Abrar Hasan,
Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Qazi Afzal Husain, Dean, Faculty of Arts,
Prof. Ashraf Malik, Principal, J.N. Medical College, Prof. Ekram Husain,
Principal, Z.H. College of Engineering and Technology, Prof. Mahshar Raza,
Department of Geology, Prof. Mohd. Gulrez, Chairman, Department of West
Asian Studies, Prof. Badar Alam Iqbal, Chairman, Department of Commerce, Dr.
Mohammad Saleem, Department of Sunni Theology and Prof. Parvez Mustajab,
Controller of Examinations as its Secretary.
The committee is scheduled to meet on October 7, 2010 at 11 a.m. in the
Committee Room at the Administrative Block. The seven student
representatives have been invited to attend the meeting and participate in
the discussion to find out an amicable solution to the issue pertaining to
the fresh agitation and dharna for the restoration of Students’ Union.
The mandate of the Committee is to "consider the above demand in the light
of the resolution of the University Court appointing a Committee of eminent
persons to re-look and review the AMU Act in the present day perspective".
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Hike in stipend for research scholars
The Human Resource Development Ministry has increased the scholarships for junior research fellows (JRFs) and senior research fellows (SRFs) in centrally-funded technical institutions. The decision is aimed at attracting more engineering graduates to the field of scientific and technical research.
BE/BTech graduates with a GATE score (IIT graduates with a CGPA of 8 or above need not appear for GATE) or equivalent qualification will receive a stipend of Rs 16,000 per month instead of Rs 14,000 in their first two years of research in technical institutions under the control of the ministry.
National Eligibility Test (NET) qualified research fellows with a postgraduate degree in basic sciences will receive a monthly fellowship of Rs 18,000 up to the fifth year of research. While, the monthly emolument for researchers with a ME/MTech degree has been increased from Rs 14,000 to Rs 18,000 in the first two years and from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 in the next two years.
Apart from the IITs, students and research scholars at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) will also benefit.
The HRD ministry letter to the Directors of these institutions also says the “revision in rate will be applicable to other government and government aided institutions funded by the All India Council for Technical Education and University Grants Commission.”
The revision in scholarship, will come into retrospective effect from April 2010.
BE/BTech graduates with a GATE score (IIT graduates with a CGPA of 8 or above need not appear for GATE) or equivalent qualification will receive a stipend of Rs 16,000 per month instead of Rs 14,000 in their first two years of research in technical institutions under the control of the ministry.
National Eligibility Test (NET) qualified research fellows with a postgraduate degree in basic sciences will receive a monthly fellowship of Rs 18,000 up to the fifth year of research. While, the monthly emolument for researchers with a ME/MTech degree has been increased from Rs 14,000 to Rs 18,000 in the first two years and from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 in the next two years.
Apart from the IITs, students and research scholars at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) will also benefit.
The HRD ministry letter to the Directors of these institutions also says the “revision in rate will be applicable to other government and government aided institutions funded by the All India Council for Technical Education and University Grants Commission.”
The revision in scholarship, will come into retrospective effect from April 2010.
AMU students continue indefinite stir
Students of Aligarh Muslim University today threatened to intensify their stir if their "democratic rights" are not restored.The students, numbering around one hundred, have been staging an "indefinite dharna" at the University premises since yesterday, demanding more rights as well as removal of some top University officials who they allege were "crushing" their democratic rights.Mushtaq Ahmad, a spokesman of the agitators, told newspersons today that the students are demanding immediate revival of the Students' Union which has been defunct for more than four years.He said the students are also demanding the removal of some top university officials who were allegedly responsible for enforcing "draconian measures" at the campus."Since the past two years any student who tried to raise his voice was rusticated," the spokesman alleged.He said that some student leaders from New Delhi, including former students of AMU, have decided to extend full support to them for their demands.Earlier yesterday evening AMU Vice Chancellor Professor P K Abdul Azis had a meeting with senior university officials to review the situation.AMU spokesman Rahat Abrar said "The University was prepared to review the genuine demands of the protestors, but despite all efforts the agitators have not responded to any initiative."
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
In Kenya, Farmers Grow Their Own Way
Thousands of grassroots, African-led efforts are building locally rooted alternatives to the chemical agriculture promoted by the Gates Foundation and Monsanto
We had just been visiting farmers cultivating land in the lush, steep hills north of the town of Thika in central Kenya. Samuel Nderitu, our guide and host, had one more project he wanted us to see: the Tumaini Women’s Group. They were meeting to found their community's first seed bank.
We were now in an area that has suffered from six years of drought and has a high concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS, both compounding the area’s struggles with hunger.
Samuel left the highway and drove down a flat, dusty road. In the distance we could see a cluster of trees. As we got closer we could hear music, and then more than twenty elderly, colorfully dressed women emerged from the shade, singing and dancing to a song they had composed just for our visit. They led us to a tree where they asked us to sit while they told us their story.
Like most of the farmers in this area, the Tumaini women explained, they had followed the advice of outsiders (mostly large-scale foreign NGOs) who told them that yields would increase if they purchased special seeds rather than saving their own and applied chemicals to their crops. But the women soon learned the long-term consequences of these methods. When the rains stopped, crops didn't produce well and debts mounted. Stripped from years of chemical use, the soil couldn’t retain what little moisture was left, nor was there enough water to dissolve the chemicals. Yields declined and farmers could no longer afford the inputs—chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds, pesticides—that they believed were necessary to cultivate their land. Farmers became poorer and hungrier.
Now, with the help of Samuel and his wife, Peris, the women of the Tumaini group are rejecting the methods they had been taught and learning both new and traditional ways of farming—replacing methods that depend on chemicals or expensive seeds with practices rooted in ecological management and local knowledge. In doing so, they are also rejecting the latest scheme by the Global North to cure Africa of hunger and poverty, the so-called “New Green Revolution in Africa."
The New Green Revolution: Too Much Like the Old One
In 2006 the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. Their aim is to alleviate poverty and hunger in Africa by increasing food production. Much like the original green revolution, which still plagues farmers throughout India and Latin America, their mission is to increase production by increasing the amount of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and chemical dependent high-yield seed varieties farmers use. They are also aggressively pushing genetically modified seeds and the involvement of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto—currently being investigated by the Department of Justice for monopolistic practices in the United States seed market.
Many civil society groups in Kenya are outraged by AGRA’s plans and wonder why they have not been involved in deciding what is best for Africans. Josphat Ngonyo, director of the Africa Network for Animal Welfare and member of the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, states, “AGRA didn’t involve the people in Africa. This was an idea pushed onto Africa that does not work. If Africans aren’t included, it’s clearly not about us.” Ngonyo, along with many other organizers and farmers, often asks a basic question that the foundation has yet to answer: Why do you want to spread the very same farming methods that have made our farmers poor and hungry?
Many farmers’ biggest worry, however, is losing control of their seeds. AGRA’s grantees are teaming up with Monsanto and other seed companies to distribute free, patented seeds to farmers and discourage farmers from saving seed. As Ngonyo explains, “Now we’re having seeds from Monsanto, the biotech seeds that are patented. You cannot replant. You cannot harvest and store them before replanting. You’re totally dependent on Monsanto.”
Another Way: Food Security through Food Sovereignty
But the new green revolution ignores groups like the Tumaini Women’s Group: the thousands of grassroots, African-led efforts that, like AGRA's programs, are designed to boost production and generate income, but which—unlike AGRA—use methods that nourish the soil, cool the planet, build community, and empower farmers. As members of the Seattle-based campaign AGRA Watch, we came to Kenya to see some of this work firsthand.
Again and again, the farmers we met discussed the importance of controlling their own food sources—what the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls “food sovereignty."
Food sovereignty, as defined in the "Declaration of Nyéléni," a document produced by a gathering of farmers in Mali in 2007, is the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” Food sovereignty requires the democratization of our food system, with people, not corporations, in control.
Florence is the leader of the Tumaini Women’s Group and the hostess of the seed-saving workshop we had come to witness. At 72 years of age, she has transitioned away from chemical farming and transformed her land into a demonstration farm where others come to learn. She took us on a tour and proudly showed off her robust maize crop, one of over 30 crops she was growing.
Florence explained that the Tumaini women’s group consists of 23 widows, ranging from 72 to 102 years old, who collectively care for 73 orphans. The women lost their husbands and many of their children to the AIDS epidemic and are now responsible for the younger generation of grandchildren. She explained the importance of teaching the children how to grow their own food using sustainable, locally controlled methods: “We are getting old, and as the orphans grow up, we want them to sustain themselves, so we are teaching them how they can be self-sustaining through agriculture and other business.”
It was Florence who asked Samuel Nderuti, our guide, to teach her and the other members of the Tumaini group about another approach to agriculture. Samuel and his wife, Peris, are the directors and founders of Grow BioIntensive Agricultural Centre of Kenya, or GBIACK. Both are graduates of the Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kitale, Kenya, which, unlike many agricultural schools, teaches students ecological farming methods and gives them tools to organize whole communities to become self-sufficient and food secure. A key component of this approach is its emphasis on self-reliance: Farmers are taught how to grow sufficient food for themselves and their families using locally available, affordable resources, while also generating income to send their children to school and pay for other necessities.
Refugees from Kenya's recent political violence, Peris and Samuel chose to relocate to Thika, where they felt their work could have the most impact in addressing the area's difficult living conditions. GBIACK focuses on working with the most vulnerable populations: widows, orphans, and those who are poor, HIV positive, or living with AIDS. Their beautiful training center includes a demonstration farm, community library, seed bank, and classroom. In addition to training farmers in agroecological farming methods, they teach animal husbandry, beekeeping, and water conservation. They also started a program for girls to learn tailoring, allowing them to earn the income necessary to attend school. All of this is on a shoestring budget.
During the height of the drought, the GBIACK farm was one of very few in the area still able to produce food, proof to many that their methods are more resilient than those that rely on chemicals and “improved” seeds. Samuel explains, “To assist my poor brothers and sisters who are languishing in poverty due to lack of knowledge, I teach them how to fish, so that they may continue fishing the rest of their lives. I believe that if I share the knowledge that I have, many people will be able to feed themselves using the biointensive techniques.”
GBIACK’s primary aim is to provide training in the communities surrounding Thika. Most often, farmers reach out to them after seeing the results of their trainings in neighbors’ fields. To broaden the impact of trainings, Peris and Samuel choose to work with farmers—like Florence—who take leadership within their communities and teach others how to farm without chemicals. In this way, they have been able to train thousands of farmers in just a couple of years of operation.
"We didn’t know that farming can be done without spending so much money," one farmer from the Lifwa Women's Group in Bikeke, Kenya wrote in a letter to Kilili Self-Help, a U.S. group that helps raise funds for GBIACK. "We have always thought that without money we cannot do farming. We have found out that we can make our own fertilizers and also grow our own seeds."
Self-reliance Starts With Seeds
Both groups believe that saving seed is a key part of self-sufficiency. “Community seed banks are important as a source of healthy and vigorous seed to replace degenerated or lost seed, to serve as a collection point of different types of seeds from the community and beyond, and to supply farmers with quality seed of new varieties,” Peris told us.
In contrast, Samuel laments, “The technologies that are promoted by the Gates Foundation in Africa are not farmer-friendly or environmentally friendly. Some of them have not been tested fully to determine their effects on the environment and consumers. More research is required before they are released to the farmers or for commercial production.”
Farmers all over the world, the majority of whom are women, are insisting on their right to food sovereignty, and placing seed at the center of that fight. As Do’a Zaied, Palestinian agronomist and food sovereignty activist affiliated with La Via Campesina, stated, “To have your independent voice and your independent thinking, you have to have food sovereignty, and that starts with control over your own seeds.”
Florence also emphasized the importance of diversifying, growing a variety of crops appropriate to the region and their culture. “Because of foreign crops that have come, farmers have neglected the indigenous crops. GBIACK has taught us the importance of the indigenous crops—millet, cassava, and sorghum—which is good food and it helps to maintain food security,” she said. GBIACK also helps farmers living with HIV/AIDS learn to grow crops that boost their immune systems, such as amaranth.
The day we sat under the trees with the Tumaini women, many of their seeds had just finished drying, and they were testing the viability of each saved crop. The women placed samples of each of their seeds onto a damp paper towel inside a petri dish. The following week they would return to see what percentage of each seed variety germinated, which would tell them whether they could use that seed for planting. Each woman in the group had saved seed from a different crop, supplying the seed bank with a wide variety. Their collective effort resulted in a diverse, resilient collection of seeds, to which each woman had free access, taking them one step closer to food sovereignty.
We had just been visiting farmers cultivating land in the lush, steep hills north of the town of Thika in central Kenya. Samuel Nderitu, our guide and host, had one more project he wanted us to see: the Tumaini Women’s Group. They were meeting to found their community's first seed bank.
We were now in an area that has suffered from six years of drought and has a high concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS, both compounding the area’s struggles with hunger.
Samuel left the highway and drove down a flat, dusty road. In the distance we could see a cluster of trees. As we got closer we could hear music, and then more than twenty elderly, colorfully dressed women emerged from the shade, singing and dancing to a song they had composed just for our visit. They led us to a tree where they asked us to sit while they told us their story.
Like most of the farmers in this area, the Tumaini women explained, they had followed the advice of outsiders (mostly large-scale foreign NGOs) who told them that yields would increase if they purchased special seeds rather than saving their own and applied chemicals to their crops. But the women soon learned the long-term consequences of these methods. When the rains stopped, crops didn't produce well and debts mounted. Stripped from years of chemical use, the soil couldn’t retain what little moisture was left, nor was there enough water to dissolve the chemicals. Yields declined and farmers could no longer afford the inputs—chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds, pesticides—that they believed were necessary to cultivate their land. Farmers became poorer and hungrier.
Now, with the help of Samuel and his wife, Peris, the women of the Tumaini group are rejecting the methods they had been taught and learning both new and traditional ways of farming—replacing methods that depend on chemicals or expensive seeds with practices rooted in ecological management and local knowledge. In doing so, they are also rejecting the latest scheme by the Global North to cure Africa of hunger and poverty, the so-called “New Green Revolution in Africa."
The New Green Revolution: Too Much Like the Old One
In 2006 the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. Their aim is to alleviate poverty and hunger in Africa by increasing food production. Much like the original green revolution, which still plagues farmers throughout India and Latin America, their mission is to increase production by increasing the amount of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and chemical dependent high-yield seed varieties farmers use. They are also aggressively pushing genetically modified seeds and the involvement of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto—currently being investigated by the Department of Justice for monopolistic practices in the United States seed market.
Many civil society groups in Kenya are outraged by AGRA’s plans and wonder why they have not been involved in deciding what is best for Africans. Josphat Ngonyo, director of the Africa Network for Animal Welfare and member of the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition, states, “AGRA didn’t involve the people in Africa. This was an idea pushed onto Africa that does not work. If Africans aren’t included, it’s clearly not about us.” Ngonyo, along with many other organizers and farmers, often asks a basic question that the foundation has yet to answer: Why do you want to spread the very same farming methods that have made our farmers poor and hungry?
Many farmers’ biggest worry, however, is losing control of their seeds. AGRA’s grantees are teaming up with Monsanto and other seed companies to distribute free, patented seeds to farmers and discourage farmers from saving seed. As Ngonyo explains, “Now we’re having seeds from Monsanto, the biotech seeds that are patented. You cannot replant. You cannot harvest and store them before replanting. You’re totally dependent on Monsanto.”
Another Way: Food Security through Food Sovereignty
But the new green revolution ignores groups like the Tumaini Women’s Group: the thousands of grassroots, African-led efforts that, like AGRA's programs, are designed to boost production and generate income, but which—unlike AGRA—use methods that nourish the soil, cool the planet, build community, and empower farmers. As members of the Seattle-based campaign AGRA Watch, we came to Kenya to see some of this work firsthand.
Again and again, the farmers we met discussed the importance of controlling their own food sources—what the international peasant movement La Via Campesina calls “food sovereignty."
Food sovereignty, as defined in the "Declaration of Nyéléni," a document produced by a gathering of farmers in Mali in 2007, is the “right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.” Food sovereignty requires the democratization of our food system, with people, not corporations, in control.
Florence is the leader of the Tumaini Women’s Group and the hostess of the seed-saving workshop we had come to witness. At 72 years of age, she has transitioned away from chemical farming and transformed her land into a demonstration farm where others come to learn. She took us on a tour and proudly showed off her robust maize crop, one of over 30 crops she was growing.
Florence explained that the Tumaini women’s group consists of 23 widows, ranging from 72 to 102 years old, who collectively care for 73 orphans. The women lost their husbands and many of their children to the AIDS epidemic and are now responsible for the younger generation of grandchildren. She explained the importance of teaching the children how to grow their own food using sustainable, locally controlled methods: “We are getting old, and as the orphans grow up, we want them to sustain themselves, so we are teaching them how they can be self-sustaining through agriculture and other business.”
It was Florence who asked Samuel Nderuti, our guide, to teach her and the other members of the Tumaini group about another approach to agriculture. Samuel and his wife, Peris, are the directors and founders of Grow BioIntensive Agricultural Centre of Kenya, or GBIACK. Both are graduates of the Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kitale, Kenya, which, unlike many agricultural schools, teaches students ecological farming methods and gives them tools to organize whole communities to become self-sufficient and food secure. A key component of this approach is its emphasis on self-reliance: Farmers are taught how to grow sufficient food for themselves and their families using locally available, affordable resources, while also generating income to send their children to school and pay for other necessities.
Refugees from Kenya's recent political violence, Peris and Samuel chose to relocate to Thika, where they felt their work could have the most impact in addressing the area's difficult living conditions. GBIACK focuses on working with the most vulnerable populations: widows, orphans, and those who are poor, HIV positive, or living with AIDS. Their beautiful training center includes a demonstration farm, community library, seed bank, and classroom. In addition to training farmers in agroecological farming methods, they teach animal husbandry, beekeeping, and water conservation. They also started a program for girls to learn tailoring, allowing them to earn the income necessary to attend school. All of this is on a shoestring budget.
During the height of the drought, the GBIACK farm was one of very few in the area still able to produce food, proof to many that their methods are more resilient than those that rely on chemicals and “improved” seeds. Samuel explains, “To assist my poor brothers and sisters who are languishing in poverty due to lack of knowledge, I teach them how to fish, so that they may continue fishing the rest of their lives. I believe that if I share the knowledge that I have, many people will be able to feed themselves using the biointensive techniques.”
GBIACK’s primary aim is to provide training in the communities surrounding Thika. Most often, farmers reach out to them after seeing the results of their trainings in neighbors’ fields. To broaden the impact of trainings, Peris and Samuel choose to work with farmers—like Florence—who take leadership within their communities and teach others how to farm without chemicals. In this way, they have been able to train thousands of farmers in just a couple of years of operation.
"We didn’t know that farming can be done without spending so much money," one farmer from the Lifwa Women's Group in Bikeke, Kenya wrote in a letter to Kilili Self-Help, a U.S. group that helps raise funds for GBIACK. "We have always thought that without money we cannot do farming. We have found out that we can make our own fertilizers and also grow our own seeds."
Self-reliance Starts With Seeds
Both groups believe that saving seed is a key part of self-sufficiency. “Community seed banks are important as a source of healthy and vigorous seed to replace degenerated or lost seed, to serve as a collection point of different types of seeds from the community and beyond, and to supply farmers with quality seed of new varieties,” Peris told us.
In contrast, Samuel laments, “The technologies that are promoted by the Gates Foundation in Africa are not farmer-friendly or environmentally friendly. Some of them have not been tested fully to determine their effects on the environment and consumers. More research is required before they are released to the farmers or for commercial production.”
Farmers all over the world, the majority of whom are women, are insisting on their right to food sovereignty, and placing seed at the center of that fight. As Do’a Zaied, Palestinian agronomist and food sovereignty activist affiliated with La Via Campesina, stated, “To have your independent voice and your independent thinking, you have to have food sovereignty, and that starts with control over your own seeds.”
Florence also emphasized the importance of diversifying, growing a variety of crops appropriate to the region and their culture. “Because of foreign crops that have come, farmers have neglected the indigenous crops. GBIACK has taught us the importance of the indigenous crops—millet, cassava, and sorghum—which is good food and it helps to maintain food security,” she said. GBIACK also helps farmers living with HIV/AIDS learn to grow crops that boost their immune systems, such as amaranth.
The day we sat under the trees with the Tumaini women, many of their seeds had just finished drying, and they were testing the viability of each saved crop. The women placed samples of each of their seeds onto a damp paper towel inside a petri dish. The following week they would return to see what percentage of each seed variety germinated, which would tell them whether they could use that seed for planting. Each woman in the group had saved seed from a different crop, supplying the seed bank with a wide variety. Their collective effort resulted in a diverse, resilient collection of seeds, to which each woman had free access, taking them one step closer to food sovereignty.
India Says Is Now Third Highest Carbon Emitter
India's environment minister said on Monday the country could not have high economic growth and a rapid rise in carbon emissions now that the nation was the number three emitter after China and the United States.
Jairam Ramesh's comments come as negotiators from nearly 200 governments meet in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The U.N. talks aim to reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.
Indian per-capita emissions are still low but demand for energy is rising as the middle-class buys more cars, TVs and better housing. Much of that energy comes from coal oil and gas, the main sources for planet-warming carbon dioxide.
But Ramesh said India's rush for wealth could not come at the expense of the environment.
Officials said his comments are the first time a government minister has said India has overtaken Russia as the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
"We will unilaterally, voluntarily, move on a low-carbon growth path. We can't have 8-9 percent GDP growth and high-carbon growth," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in the Nepalese capital.
"It has to be low-carbon 8 percent, 9 percent growth and that is the objective that we have set for ourselves," he said.
Poorer nations are now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and many big developing countries have taken steps to curb the growth of their emissions but say they won't agree on absolute cuts, fearing this will hurt their economies.
India weathered the global financial crisis better than most, and is setting its sights on economic growth of almost 10 percent over the coming years. Its economy currently grows at around 8.5 per cent.
"We are the third largest emitter of the greenhouse gases in the world ... China is number one at 23 percent, the United States is second at about 22 percent and India is number three at about five percent."
GREENER PATH
In India, any talk of a low-carbon economy was once seen as politically very risky, given the economic costs involved. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January asked a panel to begin charting a path to a greener economy. The report is expected by the year-end.
Although India has announced a new climate plan which identifies renewable energy, such as solar power, as a key element, coal remains the backbone of energy supply in a country where almost half the 1.1 billion population has no access to electricity.
"The gap between the second and the third (highest emitters) is very very high, but nevertheless we need to be conscious of our contribution," Ramesh said.
The fraught U.N. talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations.
The risk of the talks stalling is so great that the United Nations has stopped urging nations to commit to tougher pledges to curb carbon emissions, fearing further debate could derail already fraught talks on a more ambitious climate pact.
Jairam Ramesh's comments come as negotiators from nearly 200 governments meet in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The U.N. talks aim to reach agreement on what should follow the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the key treaty on climate change, which expires in 2012.
Indian per-capita emissions are still low but demand for energy is rising as the middle-class buys more cars, TVs and better housing. Much of that energy comes from coal oil and gas, the main sources for planet-warming carbon dioxide.
But Ramesh said India's rush for wealth could not come at the expense of the environment.
Officials said his comments are the first time a government minister has said India has overtaken Russia as the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
"We will unilaterally, voluntarily, move on a low-carbon growth path. We can't have 8-9 percent GDP growth and high-carbon growth," Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in the Nepalese capital.
"It has to be low-carbon 8 percent, 9 percent growth and that is the objective that we have set for ourselves," he said.
Poorer nations are now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and many big developing countries have taken steps to curb the growth of their emissions but say they won't agree on absolute cuts, fearing this will hurt their economies.
India weathered the global financial crisis better than most, and is setting its sights on economic growth of almost 10 percent over the coming years. Its economy currently grows at around 8.5 per cent.
"We are the third largest emitter of the greenhouse gases in the world ... China is number one at 23 percent, the United States is second at about 22 percent and India is number three at about five percent."
GREENER PATH
In India, any talk of a low-carbon economy was once seen as politically very risky, given the economic costs involved. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January asked a panel to begin charting a path to a greener economy. The report is expected by the year-end.
Although India has announced a new climate plan which identifies renewable energy, such as solar power, as a key element, coal remains the backbone of energy supply in a country where almost half the 1.1 billion population has no access to electricity.
"The gap between the second and the third (highest emitters) is very very high, but nevertheless we need to be conscious of our contribution," Ramesh said.
The fraught U.N. talks have been hobbled by lack of trust between rich and poor nations over climate funds, demand for more transparency over emissions cut pledges and anger over the size of cuts offered by rich nations.
The risk of the talks stalling is so great that the United Nations has stopped urging nations to commit to tougher pledges to curb carbon emissions, fearing further debate could derail already fraught talks on a more ambitious climate pact.
Himalayas Unsettled By Melting Glaciers, More Avalanches
For the last two climbing seasons, Dawa Sherpa has missed scaling the summit of Mt Everest. But the climate ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and two-time Everest summiteer may not be relishing the thought of bearing witness once more to the impact of rising temperatures on the world’s highest peak.
Indeed, he says that even making one’s way just up to Base Camp, which lies at an altitude of 5,380 metres, can already give one the dismal view of the devastation climate change is wreaking.
"Snow cover in the mountains is decreasing, crevasses are opening up in the glaciers," says Dawa. "Avalanches (have been) occurring frequently (in) the past two years."
In 2010, one of his Sherpa staff lost his life to an avalanche. Dawa also recalls Appa Sherpa, the 20-time Everest summiteer who has been climbing Everest since 1990, as saying last year that he has seen small puddles of water even at an altitude of 8,000 metres.
Snow and glaciers cover about 10 percent of the area of Nepal, where about 10 percent of the stream flows can be traced back to the glaciers.
Melting glaciers and receding snowlines, however, are just among the many manifestations of climate change in this tiny Himalayan nation.
Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation Joint Secretary Dr Jagadish Chandra Baral shares with IPS a striking example of how climate change has been affecting Nepal’s horticulture sector.
"The apple-growing belt in the Mustang district is gradually shifting to higher altitudes," says Baral, who writes frequently on climate change, because warming temperatures have resulted in their fruits getting worms. "People there claim that while they could easily produce healthy apples as low as Lete (2,480 metres) until a few years ago, the apples now tend to catch worms even in higher altitudes like Larjung (2,550 metres), Kobang (2,640 metres) and Marpha (2,670 metres)."
Mustang is located near the Tibet border. Recently, a village there was dubbed as Nepal’s first ‘climate refugee village’.
Efforts are now underway to resettle the entire village of Dhe to a lower area of Mustang. Among other things, the sources of water there are drying up, while the flora in and around the area have been vanishing fast, leaving the villagers’ cattle herds and other grazing animals with little to eat.
According to the English-language national daily ‘Republica’, which broke the news about Dhe in June, "(a) total of 150 people (23 households) …are being shifted due to the adverse impact of climate change on the livelihoods of the poor in the village".
"Dhe village has been facing an acute shortage of water for irrigation over the last six to seven years," it added. "The irrigated land over the period has also been reduced to less than 50 percent and animal husbandry (particularly goat keeping) has declined by 40 to 45 percent.
The irony is that Nepal itself is said to contribute next to nothing to climate change, which is traced by experts to greenhouse gas emissions of countries around the world.
China and India, which sandwich Nepal, in fact happen to be two of the world’s fastest industrialising and highest carbon dioxide-emitting countries.
Earlier in 2010, though, those who have expressed doubt that climate change is real had a field day when the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced it had made a mistake in saying the Himalayan glaciers may be gone by 2035. The climate-change sceptics took this as yet another piece of evidence that much of what had been said of the global phenomenon had been nothing but hysterical hype.
But IPCC has clarified that while it had made an error on the date, it did not make a mistake about the melting away of the Himalayan glaciers.
Madan Shrestha of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology also remarks, "We have ample scientific evidence to prove that climate change is causing the Himalayan glaciers to retreat."
Shrestha has been studying Nepal’s glaciers since 1974, when he was a part of the Glaciological Expedition to Nepal (a joint effort of Japan and Nepal).
He says that he was shocked beyond belief to see a picture taken in October 2009 of the Yala glacier (5,100 metres to 5,700 metres) in Lamtang area in central Nepal. Comments Shrestha: "The photograph was evidence of the fact that the glacier’s mass had decreased and there was a significant terminus retreat."
A comparative analysis of photographs taken during different time periods clearly reveals that the fate of other glaciers such as AX010 (4,950 metres to 5,390 metres) glacier in Shorong mountain in East Nepal is no different, he adds.
Shrestha says, though, that since Nepal’s contribution to global climate change is minimal, there is not much it needs to do in terms of mitigation. "As a token response to international efforts we should voice our willingness to be a part of mitigation efforts," he says, "but our focus has to be on adaptation".
By that, he means introducing heat-resistant crop varieties and working to strengthen the dam structures so that they can withstand increased water pressure, among other thing. He says that Nepal can take a cue from Bangladesh, which has already introduced a flood-resistant variety of rice.
"It is high time we factored in climate change in our development discourse," says Shrestha. "This has simply been not happening."
Indeed, he says that even making one’s way just up to Base Camp, which lies at an altitude of 5,380 metres, can already give one the dismal view of the devastation climate change is wreaking.
"Snow cover in the mountains is decreasing, crevasses are opening up in the glaciers," says Dawa. "Avalanches (have been) occurring frequently (in) the past two years."
In 2010, one of his Sherpa staff lost his life to an avalanche. Dawa also recalls Appa Sherpa, the 20-time Everest summiteer who has been climbing Everest since 1990, as saying last year that he has seen small puddles of water even at an altitude of 8,000 metres.
Snow and glaciers cover about 10 percent of the area of Nepal, where about 10 percent of the stream flows can be traced back to the glaciers.
Melting glaciers and receding snowlines, however, are just among the many manifestations of climate change in this tiny Himalayan nation.
Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation Joint Secretary Dr Jagadish Chandra Baral shares with IPS a striking example of how climate change has been affecting Nepal’s horticulture sector.
"The apple-growing belt in the Mustang district is gradually shifting to higher altitudes," says Baral, who writes frequently on climate change, because warming temperatures have resulted in their fruits getting worms. "People there claim that while they could easily produce healthy apples as low as Lete (2,480 metres) until a few years ago, the apples now tend to catch worms even in higher altitudes like Larjung (2,550 metres), Kobang (2,640 metres) and Marpha (2,670 metres)."
Mustang is located near the Tibet border. Recently, a village there was dubbed as Nepal’s first ‘climate refugee village’.
Efforts are now underway to resettle the entire village of Dhe to a lower area of Mustang. Among other things, the sources of water there are drying up, while the flora in and around the area have been vanishing fast, leaving the villagers’ cattle herds and other grazing animals with little to eat.
According to the English-language national daily ‘Republica’, which broke the news about Dhe in June, "(a) total of 150 people (23 households) …are being shifted due to the adverse impact of climate change on the livelihoods of the poor in the village".
"Dhe village has been facing an acute shortage of water for irrigation over the last six to seven years," it added. "The irrigated land over the period has also been reduced to less than 50 percent and animal husbandry (particularly goat keeping) has declined by 40 to 45 percent.
The irony is that Nepal itself is said to contribute next to nothing to climate change, which is traced by experts to greenhouse gas emissions of countries around the world.
China and India, which sandwich Nepal, in fact happen to be two of the world’s fastest industrialising and highest carbon dioxide-emitting countries.
Earlier in 2010, though, those who have expressed doubt that climate change is real had a field day when the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced it had made a mistake in saying the Himalayan glaciers may be gone by 2035. The climate-change sceptics took this as yet another piece of evidence that much of what had been said of the global phenomenon had been nothing but hysterical hype.
But IPCC has clarified that while it had made an error on the date, it did not make a mistake about the melting away of the Himalayan glaciers.
Madan Shrestha of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology also remarks, "We have ample scientific evidence to prove that climate change is causing the Himalayan glaciers to retreat."
Shrestha has been studying Nepal’s glaciers since 1974, when he was a part of the Glaciological Expedition to Nepal (a joint effort of Japan and Nepal).
He says that he was shocked beyond belief to see a picture taken in October 2009 of the Yala glacier (5,100 metres to 5,700 metres) in Lamtang area in central Nepal. Comments Shrestha: "The photograph was evidence of the fact that the glacier’s mass had decreased and there was a significant terminus retreat."
A comparative analysis of photographs taken during different time periods clearly reveals that the fate of other glaciers such as AX010 (4,950 metres to 5,390 metres) glacier in Shorong mountain in East Nepal is no different, he adds.
Shrestha says, though, that since Nepal’s contribution to global climate change is minimal, there is not much it needs to do in terms of mitigation. "As a token response to international efforts we should voice our willingness to be a part of mitigation efforts," he says, "but our focus has to be on adaptation".
By that, he means introducing heat-resistant crop varieties and working to strengthen the dam structures so that they can withstand increased water pressure, among other thing. He says that Nepal can take a cue from Bangladesh, which has already introduced a flood-resistant variety of rice.
"It is high time we factored in climate change in our development discourse," says Shrestha. "This has simply been not happening."
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
50 per cent of IAF equipment obsolete, says IAF chief
The Indian Air Force today said that 50 per cent of its systems and equipment were obsolete and steps were being taken to bring down the obsolescence levels in the next four to five years. "The obsolescence percentage is 50 per cent," Air Chief Marshal P V Naik said here adding that "by 2014-15, it would come down to 20 per cent".
The IAF chief was addressing his annual press conference on the Air Force Day held on October 8 every year. Asked which was the most critical area for the force in this regard, Naik said, "Air Defence.
That will be the only word." The Air Chief made it clear that even with 50 per cent obsolete equipment, the IAF was capable of handling threats from the medium of air and space.
"We are fully capable of defending the country from any threat." At present, IAF relies mainly on its Russian-origin air defence systems such as the OSA-AK and Pechora and the shoulder-fired Igla missiles, which have been in service for over two decades.
In the recent past, the IAF has been working on developing its air defence network and is looking to procure various systems in this regard. It has already ordered for over six squadrons of the indigenously-made Akash air defence systems and the Spyder Medium-range Surface to Air Missile (MR-SAM) system from Israel along with aerostat radars to prevent any aerial attacks.
The force is looking at deploying low-level and medium-level transportable radars at different locations and is also planning to procure radars for being deployed in high altitude areas along the borders with China and Pakistan.
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