Feature Article

Under the Professional Institutional Networking (PIN) of Ministry of Rural Development, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sanctioned the Impact Assessment study in three districts namely Sirsa in Haryana, Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh and Hoshiarpur in Punjab. NREGS was started in the first phase in these selected districts.

The Supreme Court of India has in its judgement of 27 February 2012 on the interlinking of rivers project, given categorical directions to the Executive Government to implement the 'project' as a whole in a time bound manner and has also asked the Centre to appoint a Special Committee to work out the modalities and oversee the implementation of the project.

The livelihoods of poor livestock keepers in India primarily depend on the productivity of edible biomass available from common property resources (CPRs) like village commons, the roadsides, along railway tracts, canals, bunds etc. A pro-poor livestock development programme should focus on rejuvenating these resources through enabling policy measures and appropriate technology interventions which may increase the productivity of these lands, thereby increasing the livestock productivity dependant on them.

Animal and cross-sectional epidemiological studies suggest a link between air pollution and diabetes, whereas the limited prospective data show mixed results. We studied the association between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and incidence of diabetes.

The development of feed-in tariff (FIT) programs to support green electricity in Ontario (the Green Energy and Green Economy Act of 2009) and Germany (the Erneuerbare Energien-Gesetz of 2000) is compared. The two policies are highly comparable, offering similar rates for most renewable electricity technologies. Major differences between the policies include the level of differentiation found in the German policy, as well as the use of a price degression strategy for FIT rates in Germany compared to an escalation strategy in Ontario.

Consider this story: It’s January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don’t hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

Burdwan district, with its advantageous position in transportation network and good resource endowments, spontaneously responded to the commercialisation of agriculture. Rice received considerable commercial importance in the second half of the nineteenth century. It found access to new markets within and outside Bengal and consequently rice trade flourished. Rice trade was carried on regularly in an organised way in Burdwan and expanded considerably from the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Environment Matters interviews Glenn-Marie Lange, program leader, WAVES, and team leader, Policy and Economics, at the World Bank’s Environment Department, on the progress made in establishing global accounting systems that incorporate natural capital.

Marianne Fay, chief economist for the World Bank Sustainable Development Network, led a study on green growth, defined as growth that is effi’cient, clean, and resilient: e’cient in its use of natural resources, clean in minimizing pollution and environmental impacts, and resilient in fully accounting for natural hazards. Here, Environment Matters interviews Fay on what the study means.

Keeping in focus the rural area and its distribution system, a Regional Rural Water Supply Scheme (RRWSS) for 30 villages in Nashik District consisting of a distribution system from MBR (Master Balancing Reservoir) to GSR (Ground Service Reservoirs) of 30 villages is selected as a reference scheme for this study.