Feature Article

The UN Conference on the Environment held in 1992 in Rio-de-Janeiro is a landmark in human efforts to keep our planet over blue. Twenty years after Rio, we are struggling to find a pathway of development which concurrently integrates the principles of ecology, economics, equity, ethics and employment. Green Economy can be defined as, "Enhancing economic growth in perpetuity without associated ecological and/or social harm.

The challenges that India's agriculture faces in the coming years remain enormous. Though we have achieved self-sufficiency in cereal production, we continue to depend on imports for pulses and edible oils. We continue to face the problem of under-nutrition, particularly among our children and women. Ensuring food and nutritional security and eliminating hunger, including hidden hunger, remain a high national priority.

Urban areas are responsible for significant amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but cities can have quite different values of carbon footprints. The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of urban GHG emissions in order to explain these differences. Seven global cities – Bangkok, Chicago, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan and New York City – have been included in the paper's sample. These cases have been chosen in order to represent a variety of characteristics and contexts of developed and developing countries and according to data availability.

This paper aims to develop a framework to assist the identification of robust adaptation options that account for uncertainty in future climate change impacts for the water sector.

This article studies the development of the Non-Pesticidal Management Project (NPM) that emerged in the late 1980s in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district of the semi-arid region Telengana as a response to accumulating agrarian distress, when chemical pesticides did not help to counter massive pest infestations.

The paper presents four plants used as an agricultural season indicator by Mao Naga tribe of Manipur, India. Agriculture is the main occupation of the tribe and they have a unique way of knowing plantation season for different crops by observing the flowering of some plants. The indicator plants are peach (Prunus persica), wild cherry (P. carmesina), camel foot (Bauhinia purpurea) and dancing girl (Mantisia spathulata). The information on plants used as season indicators may help understanding the global warming and climate change in recent years.

Traditional ecological knowledge has been established to have a bearing on natural resource management by the indigenous communities living in biodiversity rich North eastern hill region. The present study correlates the indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge in assessing the nutrient availability status of the agricultural soil as practiced by the ‘Nyishi’ tribes who use visual properties such as colour, texture and topographic positioning of land/terrain.

The impacts of tobacco cultivation on traditional agro-practices and knowledge, food security, agro-biodiversity and socio-economic conditions of a remote hilly tribal community of Bangladesh were investigated. Sixty per cent households were found practicing shifting cultivation compared with 10 yrs back changing local food availability. Local crop varieties were being lost due to low cultivation and weak seed preservation system. Despite better benefits from traditional cultivation, 90% people now fully depended upon tobacco cultivation for significant cash flow at a time.

Though small in size, Nepal is rich in biocultural diversity. Magar is one of the groups of ancient population among many such groups scattered all along the rugged terrain of the country. Magar animal interrelationship has been studied in the present work. Data have been collected using tools such as questionnaire survey, structured interview, semi-structured interview and participatory approaches. The group is found to have rich knowledge mainly on Zootherapeutic uses of animals. Altogether 39 species of animals have been identified which of various uses to the group.