| India gets less poor India has 260 million people living in poverty, but the number has decreased even as the population has multiplied according to India's Minister of Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation. 260.25 million people earned less than one US dollar a day and could not afford two meals a day. Yet it is a marked decrease from 1993- 94, when 320 million people were below the poverty line. Uttar Pradesh, has the biggest proportion of poor people, nearly 53 million, and its position among the states and union territories has not changed in 30 years. Among the most prosperous is Gujarat, with only 6.7 million poor people. |
| In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But while the report says the United States will be substantially
changed in the next few decades - "very likely" seeing
the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves
and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal
marshes, for example - it does not propose any major shift in the
administration's It recommends adapting to inevitable changes. It does not recommend making rapid reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming, the approach favored by many environmental groups and countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty written in the Clinton administration that was rejected by Mr. Bush. The new document, "U.S. Climate Action Report 2002," strongly concludes that no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing can be done about the environmental consequences of several decades' worth of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere. Its emphasis on adapting to the inevitable fits in neatly with the climate plan Mr. Bush announced in February. He called for voluntary measures that would allow gas emissions to continue to rise, with the goal of slowing the rate of growth. Yet the new report's predictions present a sharp contrast to previous statements on climate change by the administration, which has always spoken in generalities and emphasized the need for much more research to resolve scientific questions. - New York Times, June 3, 2002 |
| For the first time in the nation's history, the Brazilian Congress has passed a legal code that grants equal rights to women after 26 years of debates, amendments, delays, and parliamentary maneuvering. The new legal code eliminates several old provisions that allow husbands the right to obtain an annulment if they discover that their wife was not a virgin at the time of marriage, as well as the traditional concept of "paternal power," which gives Brazilian fathers the unrestricted legal rights to make all decisions on behalf of their families. Under the new law, wives will share familial authority with their husbands and single mothers will now be recognized as heads of households. The legislation, which has more than 2,000 articles, is not expected to go into effect fully until 2003 because laws to carry out the provisions still must be written or revised. - New York Times, Larry Rohter, August 24, 2001 |
| GREENHOUSE POLLUTANTS DROP ... SLIGHTLY According to the Australia Institute, Australia's greenhouse gas emissions per capita are 35 percent above the US and the highest in the industrialized world. Institute director Clive Hamilton blamed a high reliance on coal to make electricity and continued high levels of land clearance and automobile emissions. Australia produced 27.9 tons of carbon dioxide per person in 1999, the last year for which figures are available. That is a decline of 3.5 percent from 1990 levels of 28.9 tons. The second-highest per capita producer, Canada, emitted 22.2 tons, up 13.2 per cent from 19.6 tons in 1990. Third on the list was the US, producing 20.7 tons a head in 1999 compared to 20 tons in 1990. The average for industrialized countries on the Australia Institute survey was 12.6 tons, down 14 percent from 14.7 tons in 1990. The decline appears to be a result of the collapse of heavy industry in former Eastern bloc countries with Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic states cutting per capita emissions by between 50 percent and 75 percent. |
| NEW HAMPSHIRE FIRST STATE TO PASS LAW CURBING GLOBAL WARMING …FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY CALIFORNIA |
| The United Nations will no longer plan large-scale,
multi-agenda summits such as last week's Earth Summit In
Johannesburg, South Africa until governments begin enacting what
was decided upon at previous meetings. Instead, the UN will set
up an unprecedented operation to report on how governments are performing.
Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has appointed Mark Malloch Brown
– head of the UN Development Program – as "campaign
manager and scorekeeper" for the reporting, to ensure that
Johannesburg is not followed by a period of inaction as after previous
summits. Brown has begun to prepare a series of reports on developing
countries to see how far they are matching a set of goals adopted
at the Millennium Summit two years ago which would halve dire poverty
in the world by 2015. The first reports on 15 countries will go
to the UN General Assembly in October and these are now |
| Guatemala's Congress has enacted a law prohibiting racial discrimination,
a move that United Nations officials praised as a step forward in
implementing 1996 peace accords. The law calls for jail sentences
of one to three years, as well as fines, for discrimination based
on race, ethnicity, religion, age or disability. It is aimed mostly
at the country's Indian majority. About 200,000 people, mainly Maya
Indians, were killed in the 36-year civil war. Although the peace
accords ended the war, promises of fair treatment and social justice
for Indians, who represent about 60 percent of the country's 12
million people, have gone mostly unfulfilled. "By recognizing
and outlawing the discrimination suffered by Mayas, Garifunas and
Xincas (the country's main Indian groups), a step forward has been
taken in complying with the peace accords on Indian rights,"
the UN Mission in Guatemala said in a statement. Congress also granted
12 radio frequencies to Indian communities to help preserve their
culture. The anti-discrimination law, approved by a broad majority
in Congress, must still be signed by President Alfonso Portillo
before it takes effect. |
| The Russian Duma (the lower house of Parliament) has confirmed
its adherence to destroying of the nation's stocks of chemical weapons
and also recognized the necessity, in the interests of the whole
of mankind, to exclude the possibility of using chemical weapons.
This resolution has been adopted for the opening of the Fifth Conference
of the member countries of the Organization for Banning Chemical
Weapons. The Duma desired to highlight the measures being taken
by Russia in the sphere of chemical weapons, including the destruction
of specific weapon categories before the appointed time and a considerable
increase in financing the Federal Targeted Program - Destruction
of the Stocks of Chemical Weapons in the Russian Federation. The
Russian parliamentarians called for expanding global cooperation
with Russia in the sphere of chemical disarmament in the interests
of all the member-countries of the convention. "Additional
possibilities in this sphere are opening as a result of the decisions
taken at the meeting of the heads of state and government of the
Group of Eight Countries that took place on June 26-27 in Kinanaskis.
These decisions concerned the institution of a Global Partnership
with the aim of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
and the materials for their making." |
| CALIFORNIA APPROVES MAJOR INCREASE IN RENEWABLE ENERGY Last week, California passed legislation designed to boost renewable energy use in the state to 20 percent of total retail energy sales by 2017. California's target for wind, solar and other renewables far exceeds targets under consideration by the federal government. Recently, the state also mandated reductions in vehicular carbon dioxide emissions - a move likely to push car makers to improve fuel efficiency. According to Matt Freedman, an attorney for the Utility Reform Network in San Francisco, these new laws show that "California is beginning to separate itself from national policy and push the envelope" on energy conservation. www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/weather/ |