CONTENTS:- Preface; 1. Irrigation management: Facing the challenge; 2. Strategies for improved water management; 3. Bid-dam construction is on the rise; 4. A breakthrough in the evolution of large dams? 5. End of controversy on large dams? 6. Water facts and findings on large dams? 7. Population growth and cropland; 8. Population growth and grain production; 9. Developing countries and the WTO agricultural negotiations; 10. Food for the billions; 11. Food first; 12. Biodiversity; 13. Ecosystems, our unknown protectors; 14. Employment and promoting ecology: How a service culture could put people back to work; 15. Saving the planet: Imperialism in green garb? 16. Living with diversity; 17. An agenda for change; 18. Forests: The earth's lungs; 19. Climate change and human health; 20. Economics and sustainable development; 21. Population growth and climate change; 22. Sustainable cities; 23. Heating up environmental education and communication; 24. Urbanisation and the environment; 25. Fresh water and the environment; 26. Economics and environment; 27. Forests; 28. Energy and sustainability; 29. The environment, the economy and public health: An integrated view; 30. Watershed development programme; 31. Population growth and natural recreation areas; 32. The dynamics of rural poverty in India; 33. The Indian economy and the cattle wealth; 34. Safety first; 35. Genetic diversity and food security; 36. Global warming: Worrisome signs; 37. Can genetically modified organisms feed the world? 38. Energy: A fair deal for all;
DESCRIPTION
Fishers' nets and loggers' saws may directly impoverish local ecosystems, but most biological losses have root causes far away, in long-settled urban areas and farms where diversity is seldom a concern, but where steadily rising demand for food, water, wood and other resource-and the dispersal of resulting wastes-reach far beyond the settled areas themselves. In general, these peopled landscapes have lost much of their own biological wealth, but what remains is still important to their continued functioning and livability. Reconciling farms and cities with diversity will require stopping the damage they bring to remaining natural habits, but also beginning to halt and reverse the homogenization of these unnatural habits. The unsustainability of modern agriculture is in part a measure of its inability to tolerate diversity. Both genetic and ecological uniformity-the sameness of fields sown horizon to horizon without interruption-demand costly and often futile reliance on chemicals to protect crops from pests or diseases that are rapidly spreading and evolving. The drive to leave no hectare uplowed worsens soil erosion, pushing tractors onto highly erodible hillsides and removing windbreaks, hedgerows and other remnant habitats.
