To subscribe to this monthly newsletter, click here
|
Environment-poverty (E-pov) News is a monthly news bulletin of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)'s Natural Resource Management and Livelihood unit. This provocative bulletin brings you the latest developments on environment, poverty and governance in India and South Asia. It also features community initiatives on livelihood security. The newsletter regularly updates on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) on its development effectiveness.
It intends to be a platform for serious dialogue. We invite you to actively participate in this initiative by alerting us to new developments and research on the poverty-environment interface and on NREGA. |
| Inside | |
 |
In Focus: Village institutions crucial for natural resources management
NREGA Updates: Forest cover increase through NREGA
Resources: World Development Report 2008
Down To Earth: Read latest stories on poverty and environment
| Policy Watch | |
|
Agricultural growth in Eastern India critical: study
A research study conducted by Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology has said that besides West Bengal and Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the agricultural growth in eastern states are in a critical stage.
Govt. to maintain 4% agriculture growth
Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has declared that government would sustain the trend of 4% growth in agriculture in the long term.
Plan to promote Jatropha farming in Rajasthan
The Rajasthan Government has earmarked 40,000 hectares of wasteland in 11 districts for cultivation of Jatropha to produce bio-fuel.
World Bank to popularize National Happiness concept
Bhutan's unique concept of ‘Gross National Happiness’ (GNH) to measure the country's wealth, an alternative to the world's economic scale, could now become a global buzzword with the World Bank.
World Bank loan for local bodies in Kerala
Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala has asked the state government to explore possibilities of availing low-rate World Bank loan for projects to be implemented by local bodies.
95% Tamil Nadu Panchayat leaders are literate
According to a study by the rural development department, a majority of the 12,618 elected village panchayat presidents in Tamil Nadu have been to school. In fact, one is a Ph.D and 18 have M.Phil degrees.
India aims to end open-air defecation by 2012
Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad told the World Toilet summit that India aims to eradicate open-air defecation by 2012 by building toilets for hundreds of millions of its poor and homeless.
| In Focus | |
|
Village institutions crucial for natural resources managementSukhomajri was a properous village. Its prosperity was built on the regeneration of its natural wealth —forests and water, and a village institution with the autonomy and power to make decisions. Bunga, a village with a thriving economy today was inspired by Sukhomajri’s success. Two villages but two very different stories.
| NREGA Update |
|
Forest cover increase through NREGAThe government plans to increase forest and tree cover over the next five years by 5%. The target has been proposed as part of the 11th five-year plan, which has been finalised recently.
Commission set up to review women’s participation in NREGAThe All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has recently set up a commission related to women’s participation in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
NREGA in South AfricaSouth Africa is considering a revolutionary Indian employment model, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) to consolidate South Africa's Extended Public Works Programme.
| Resources | |
|
World Development Report 2008The 2008 World Development Report examines what agriculture can do for development, how agriculture-for-development agendas can best be implemented, and the most effective ways to use agriculture for development and poverty reduction.
Global Hunger Index 2007
New Global Hunger Index shows most countries will not reach all Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets related to hunger and child mortality if progress continues at current rates. As part of the MDGs, the international community set targets to cut hunger in half and under-five mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015.
Migrant workers worldwide sent home more than US$300 billion in 2006, new study finds
First global map of remittances flows to developing nations presented by Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) states that migrants working in industrialized countries sent more than US$300 billion to developing nations in 2006.
The Millennium Development Goals: Progress in Asia and the Pacific 2007
A recently released report on the status of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Asia and Pacific region states that there is uneven progress within countries. Many of the less developed economies need global support to plug some of their key development gaps The report - “The Millennium Development Goals: Progress in Asia and the Pacific 2007” - states that despite this fragmentation the region is well on track and ahead of its peers in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa to reduce extreme poverty by half, attain universal education and achieve gender parity in education by the target year 2015.
ASIA: Water Services - Fee or Free?
Access to safe water may be touted as a human right, but inadequate supplies, crumbling water systems and the galloping needs of growing populations are forcing experts, government utilities and funding agencies to ponder over devising sustainable water service networks in Asia’s teeming cities. At least 40 percent of poor people living in urban areas across the Asia-Pacific have no connection to piped water. Despite the region’s record rates of economic growth over decades, the biggest challenges for them include the basic need of how to provide their people with sufficient quantities of safe drinking water. This concern will be among the main areas of focus of a report, called ‘Asian Water and Development Outlook’, that the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) is due to release later in November and at the first Asia-Pacific Water Summit in Japan on Dec. 3-4 this year.
 |
Tigers versus Tribals – Tug of war continues
Is it possible to reconcile the interests of what seems to be two competing groups?
Read More
Resettlement & rehabilitation. New policy, old story
The government announced the new ‘National Policy on Resettlement and Rehabilitation’ (NPRR) 2007 on October 11. Though it was heralded as a ground-breaking policy, a closer look reveals gaping holes, which may make it less than just for the displaced.
Read More
Himachal villagers resist pine monoculture, reclaim forests for fodder
Though pine provided little fodder for cattle, yet till 15 years ago, pine-covered hillsides of Karsog in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district was a common sight. Now pine monoculture in Karsog has been replaced by forests of oak, amla (Indian gooseberry), pomegranate and other trees as people in its villages prefer broadleaved species for cattle fodder.
Read More
Indian farmers get short shrift as country imports wheat
In February this year, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar announced that the country could export wheat in the near future. But the minister seems to have done a volte-face on his statement. India has entered the wheat market all right, but as an importer. Have the imports been necessitated by a shortfall in production?
Read More
2007 © Centre for Science and Environment, 41, Tughlakabad Institutional Area,New Delhi -110062, India
Tel: +91-11 29955124/125;29955125; 29956394 | Fax: +91-11-29955870; +91-11-29955879
E-mail:cse@cseindia.org