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Erle Frayne Argonza
On a case to case basis, each country has taken certain forms of action regarding climate change. India had recently formulated its action plan for climate change, a plan that served well as input to its cooperative efforts with South Asian countries.
The report is shown below.
Happy reading!
[12 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
India launches climate change action plan
T. V. Padma
4 July 2008 | EN
India’s solar mission aims to make its solar energy industry as competitive as its fossil fuel industry
Flickr/z1zzy
[NEW DELHI] India released its national action plan on climate change this week (30 June) with a focus on harnessing renewable energy rather than stringent emissions targets.
India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh released the plan ahead of his attendance at next week’s (7–9 July) G8 summit in Japan where climate change is expected to be discussed.
The action plan spells out eight priority missions that will promote India’s development objectives, with the “co-benefit” of tackling climate change.
The eight missions are: solar energy, enhanced energy efficiency, sustainable habitats, water conservation, sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem, developing a ‘green’ India, sustainable agriculture and building a strategic knowledge platform on climate change.
“Over a period of time, we must pioneer a graduated shift from economic activity based on fossil fuels to one based on non-fossil fuels, and from reliance on non-renewable and depleting sources of energy to renewable sources of energy,” Singh said.
The missions will be managed by the appropriate ministries, and specific programmes within the missions will be finalised by December.
Of these, solar energy will receive a big thrust. India receives the equivalent of about 5,000 trillion kilowatt hours of energy from the sun each year — 5.5 kilowatt hours per square metre each year — with most areas experiencing clear, sunny weather for 250 to 300 days.
The solar mission aims to tap this natural resource and make the country’s solar energy industry as competitive as the fossil fuel industry by setting up a new research centre, entering into research collaborations and encouraging technology transfer.
The plan does not spell out greenhouse gas emission targets, but states that per capita emissions in India will not exceed levels in industrialised countries. India is the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in absolute terms, but lies behind the US and Europe in terms of annual per capita emissions it (1.2 tonnes compared to 20 and 9.4 tonnes respectively).
The international environmental organisation Greenpeace, said in a statement that the plan is a “welcome first step” but has some weak areas that need to be addressed.
“The plan lacks clear policy prescriptions and targets for improving energy efficiency and reducing transportation emissions,” Srinivas Krishnaswamy, policy advisor for Greenpeace, India, told SciDev.Net.
“They should have placed more emphasis on mandatory emission standards,” he added.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
Climate change is among the world’s hottest environmental and developmental issues. Climate change alone has so many facets to it, and some issues are so contentious they border hoax.
Below is a news item from South Asia, concerning concerted efforts by stakeholders to address climate change.
Happy reading!
[13 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
South Asian nations join forces to tackle climate change
Source: IRIN
9 July 2008 | EN | 中文
The countries have pledged to improve monitoring and exchange of information on impacts such as rising sea levels
Flickr/Sumaiya Ahmed
South Asian nations have adopted a three-year environmental action plan to reduce the impact of climate change in the region.
Environmental ministers from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — adopted the declaration in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week (3 July) following a three-day summit.
The action plan covers 2009–2011, with countries pledging to improve monitoring and exchange of information on disaster preparedness and extreme events, meteorological data, information on climate change impacts such as increased sea levels, glacial melting and biodiversity, and capacity for clean development mechanism projects.
The ministers called for more technology to fight climate change and better technology and knowledge transfer between SAARC member states.
They also called for a South Asia fund on climate change, with further discussions scheduled for the next SAARC summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in July.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Who says that community-based health care systems won’t work? In the Philippines this has been an on-going effort, with the University of the Philippines leading. Couples of communities were adopted by the U.P. Manila in other regions precisely to study the effects of intervention via community organization.
Below is a news caption about a study that shows the effectiveness of community-based health care. Community-based health care has already been revolutionizing access to health care by many poor folks in the south.
Enjoy your read!
[02 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Community-directed healthcare ‘effective’, finds study
Abiose Adelaja
23 June 2008 | EN
In the strategy, family members help deliver drugs and administer treatment, instead of patients visiting a clinic
Flickr/CharlesFred
Community-administered healthcare is effective in combating a range of illnesses including river blindness and malaria as well as micronutrient deficiencies, according to a study of over two million people in three African countries.
The researchers say restrictive health department policies on who can administer medications should be altered so that other illnesses can be tackled in a similar fashion.
Community-directed drug intervention (CDI) has proved successful in delivering the drug Ivermectin to treat river blindness, also known as onchocerciasis. In the strategy, family members help deliver drugs and administer treatment, instead of patients visiting a clinic.
The study looked at the effectiveness of CDI in strategies to fight river blindness, later pairing it with treatments against malaria, tuberculosis and micronutrient deficiencies, in Cameroon, Nigeria and Uganda. Community dispensing of drugs, vitamin A supplements and insecticide-treated mosquito nets was compared with conventional delivery strategies over three years.
Researchers found that the number of feverish children receiving the right antimalarial treatment doubled, exceeding the 60 per cent target set by the Roll Back Malaria campaign. The use of insecticide-treated bednets also doubled.
Vitamin A supplementation coverage was also significantly higher in districts using CDI compared with those that did not. But community-directed interventions for tuberculosis proved only as effective as treatment from clinics.
Samuel Wanji, a researcher at the University of Buéa who conducted the southwest Cameroon part of the study, says the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control — linked to the WHO and with 19 health ministers on the board — has given the go-ahead to extend the use of CDI for river blindness in countries that have lower, but still significant, levels of the disease.
The expanded programme will investigate whether CDI works as well in places where disease infection is less intense, and is scheduled to begin before the end of the year. Dispensing of other medications will be added as the programme progresses.
“The study’s approach is very useful for increasing access to health and will reduce the burden on health facilities,” says Hans Remme of the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Disease.
But a shortage of drugs and other materials remains a drawback, according to a WHO report of the study.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
A heartwarming news from India and Vietnam concerns the reduction of prices of vaccines for cholera. To recall, India is among the countries that lead in bringing down pharmaceutical costs, thus saving the day for many poorer folks in the south who are relentlessly victimized by the rent-seeking practices of Western drug companies.
Enjoy your read!
[02 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Cheaper cholera vaccine passes pilot trial
Sanjit Bagchi
23 June 2008 | EN | 中文
The current international cholera vaccine is too expensive for developing countries
Flickr/larskflem
A reformulated oral vaccine against cholera promises to be an affordable and effective weapon to combat the disease for people living in endemic areas of developing countries, according to a new study.
The internationally licensed cholera vaccine currently available is too expensive for use in developing countries, where it is most needed.
Vietnam produces its own two-dose oral cholera vaccine and distributes it through its public health system at US$0.40 a dose. Nine million doses have been delivered so far.
To kick-start the process of scaling up this vaccine in developing countries around the globe, the vaccine was reformulated to comply with WHO standards.
Researchers from India, Korea and Sweden conducted a pilot trial of the vaccine at Kolkota’s Infectious Diseases Hospital in eastern India. Cholera is endemic in Kolkota.
The study evaluated the vaccine’s safety and efficacy outside Vietnam.
Participants were healthy and included 101 adults aged 18–40 years and 100 children aged 1–17 years. They received two random doses of either the vaccine or a placebo, 14 days apart.
After immunization, 53 per cent of the adults and 80 per cent of the children showed at least a four-fold increase in their antibody levels against Vibrio cholerae O1, the predominant strain of cholera-causing bacteria.
Safety tests revealed that “no adverse event occurred more frequently in the vaccinated than in the placebo group”, say the researchers.
“Cholera affects a large number of children in developing countries, and so a vaccine that is safe and effective for children sounds impressive, and the development as a whole appears to be a step towards global rolling out of the cholera vaccine,” says Sumana Kanjilal, associate professor of paediatric medicine at Calcutta National Medical College Hospital, India.
The reformulated vaccine is now undergoing a trial in around 70,000 people in Kolkata. “If the vaccine is found to be safe and protective, this could pave the way for the use of this vaccine in the control of cholera worldwide,” the researchers write.
The study was published in PLoS ONE.
Erle Frayne Argonza
England has launched an award system recently to innovators around the world who can revolutionize stove technology. The purpose of stove innovation is to increase access of people and market end-users to energy by utilizing fuel resources available in the locality, such as coconut and wood wastes.
Below is a heartwarming news about a stove innovation from South Asia that won the award. As reported, it surely has made energy available to many people in India which lacks sufficient energy due to the rapidly rising demand for fuel.
Enjoy your read!
[29 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Stove projects stir up energy award success
Katherine Nightingale
A TIDE cooking stove in use
Ashden Awards/TIDE
Innovators bringing sustainable energy to communities in developing countries were recognised last night (19 June) at an awards ceremony held in London, United Kingdom.
Projects from Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania and Uganda were all awarded prizes of £20,000 (around US$40,000) at the annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.
The Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) project, which designs safer and more efficient wood-burning stoves, was crowned the overall Energy Champion, winning a £40,000 prize.
These TIDE stoves are a boon for an estimated eight million people working in small industries in southern India — for example, in textile dying, spice drying and street food vendors.
Svati Bhogle, chief executive of TIDE, said the award “gives us the motivation to venture into uncharted terrain, to first break new ground and then develop it into a beaten track”.
The stoves can use waste material such as coconut shells as well as wood. Improved heat transfer, insulation and combustion creates less heat and smoke, resulting in improved working conditions. They were designed with each industry specifically in mind, with users contributing to the development.
Bhogle said 10,500 stoves are now in use in 12 industry sectors, saving 140,000 tonnes of fuel and 200,000 tonnes of emitted carbon dioxide.
“There is a serious energy crisis in rural India, but access to energy and its efficient use, accompanied by well-conceived and well-implemented enabling mechanisms, has the potential to transform rural areas.”
Other stoves were prominent among this year’s winners. The Kisangani Smith Group in Tanzania designed a stove that uses compressed waste sawdust or rice husks, rather than expensive charcoal.
The GAIA association has opted to use ethanol fuel produced from the waste molasses of the sugar industry in their stoves, which they have distributed to Somalian refugees living in a large camp in eastern Ethiopia.
Elsewhere, both the Aryavart Gramin Bank in India and Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh — a 2006 winner and recipient of this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award — provide affordable loans for people without access to the electricity grid to install solar power in their homes.
The Ugandan project, Fruits of the Nile, harnesses the power of the sun to dry fruit. Simple solar dryers, constructed from a wooden frame covered with plastic, let the light in, keep insects out and use natural convection.
Ashden also published a report, commissioned by the UK Department for International Development, analysing ten previous winners. More ways must be found to provide financial and human resources for innovative research and development, it concluded, with clear national energy policies to guide projects.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang umaga! Good morning!
We all know how powerful and devastating are the cyclones in the Bengal region of India. As much as millions instantly become homeless whenever a powerful cyclone sweeps the area, bringing along flood waters that seem to stay forever in the affected zones.
It seems that an intervention area that could somehow alleviate problems regarding the cyclone would be better forecasting. Predicting cyclones will henceforth get a boost as state-of-the-art aircraft will be added to the list of precision equipment that will be utilized for the purpose.
Enjoy your read.
[25 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
India to employ aircraft in cyclone forecasting
T. V. Padma
2 June 2008 | EN
Meteorologists will fly aircraft into the centre of cyclones
National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration
[NEW DELHI] India is planning to fly aircraft into the centre of cyclones to gather data to predict where the storm will hit.
This is one of a series of measures to be undertaken by India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences to improve cyclone forecasting. These include increasing and enhancing space-based, land-based and ocean-based observation systems, as well as developing new forecast models.
The aircraft studies start this autumn in the Bay of Bengal as a cyclone-forecasting demonstration project, followed by a pilot phase in 2009–10 and an operational phase by 2011.
The project follows a workshop with the United States on tropical-storm forecasting, held in Delhi at the end of March 2008, where the two countries agreed to work together.
Scientists from the Indian Meteorological Department and other key institutes engaged in weather research will use aircraft reconnaissance to gather information at the cyclone’s ‘eye’ — a calm, cloudless area of 15–40 kilometres radius in the centre, where the pressure is lowest.
Data will also be collected from the surrounding ‘eyewall’, the most destructive part of the cyclone, a 16-kilometre-high belt of the strongest winds, typically exceeding 50 kilometre per hour.
These winds are driven by rapid pressure changes near the eye that dictate the movement of the storm.
In the United States, small helicopters release balloons fitted with sensors to measure wind speed, pressure and direction, and humidity in the eye and the eyewall. These data are fed into forecast models to predict the track, direction and speed of hurricanes — the Atlantic equivalent of cyclones.
But US aircraft may not be available for the Bay of Bengal project in October–November as that is the season for US hurricanes. In this case, Indian Air Force aircraft will be used.
“India currently uses data on winds outside the eye region to estimate the conditions inside and run forecast models,” says Dev Raj Sikka, chairman of the scientific advisory committee for the project.
But 48-hour forecasts can only indicate a 250–300-kilometre belt of land where the cyclone is likely to hit. “It is difficult to evacuate such a big area in 48 hours. We need to narrow down to 100 kilometres at least,” he says.
Aircraft reconnaissance in the United States over the past 20 years has narrowed prediction of a hurricane’s path from to within 300 kilometres to within 150 kilometres.
NANOTECHNOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE (FROM INDIA)
Erle Frayne Argonza
Putting together nanotechnology, biotechnology and bio-informatics is a new challenging area of R&D in the field of agriculture.
The experts of India, with the co-sponsorship by the state, are now into the next exciting phase of developing food production via this new integration methodology and practice. The implications of the new practice on quality control are legion, to say the least.
Happy reading.
[21 July 2003, Quezon City, MetroManila. Via SciDev update reports.]
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India looks to nanotechnology to boost agriculture
M. Sreelata
16 May 2008 | EN
Nanotechnology could help water delivery systems for farming
Flickr/IRRI
The Indian government is looking towards nanotechnology as a means of boosting agricultural productivity in the country.
In a report released in April, the Planning Commission of India recommends nanotechnology research and development (R&D) should become one of six areas for investment.
The commission recommends policies to and carries out financial planning for government departments. The report was written by a subgroup of the commission, and will be incorporated into India’s eleventh five-year plan, for 2007–2012.
The authors recommend ways to harness nanotechnology, biotechnology and bioinformatics to transform Indian agriculture, including creating a national institute of nanotechnology in agriculture.
The report says nanotechnology such as nano-sensors and nano-based smart delivery systems could help ensure natural resources like water, nutrients and chemicals are used efficiently in agriculture. Nano-barcodes and nano-processing could also help monitor the quality of agricultural produce.
The report proposes a national consortium on nanotechnology R&D, to include the proposed national institute and Indian institutions that are already actively researching nanotechnology.
It also recommends that Indian universities and institutions develop suitable graduate and postgraduate programmes to train young scientists in nanotechnology.
Vandana Dwivedi, coordinator of the subgroup and an advisor in the Planning Commission, says implementing all the report’s recommendations will take time, though she hopes to see some of the aspects rolled out in the 2007–2012 five-year plan. No specific initiatives on nanotechnology have yet been announced.
But not everyone is impressed by the government’s plans. India should be cautious about rushing for technologies, says M. S. Swaminathan, a former head of the National Commission for Farmers and widely considered the father of India’s green revolution.
“If technology has applications, it has limitations too. Right from the beginning it is advisable to have a national regulatory commission on nanotechnology so that people don’t get into litigation later,” he told SciDev.Net.
Swaminathan believes transferring existing technologies to farmers should take priority, saying, “We should first disseminate ordinary technology to the farmer. Even the basic know-how has not reached fields yet. The gap between scientific know-how and field level do-how remains as wide as ever.”
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