Voluntary groups in Madras are taking up the onus of increasing AIDS awareness among various groups including students, blue collar workers and truck drivers

The sorry state of the Bagmati is an eloquent pointer to the state of the Kathmandu Valley

Instead of treating AIDS patients in hospitals, an organisation in Uganda is effectively extending health care to them in their own homes

Nepal's carpet industry is being castigated for being the primary polluter of the Kathmandu valley

So successful was the Siandi experiment in cooperative fishing and prawn culture, vested interests just would not allow it to continue

The Newars of Kathmandu realised centuries ago that if they had to leave space for future generations, they would have to live as compactly as possible

Urban pressures are threatening to destroy the lesser known of Kathmandu's historical structures

Complex systems of preserving biodiversity, evolved over centuries, have not saved traditional communities living in bio rich areas like India from poverty. Only if India starts patenting its germplasm can it compensate those of its communities which have

• Half the world's 6,000 languages will die out in the next 75 to 100 years. • Harvard biologist Edward Wilson estimates that nearly 140 species become extinct very day. • The

Farm forestry was promoted in India in the late 1970s to produce fuelwood for rural consumption. The program was immensly successful in the green revolution region in the early 1980s, but farmers produced wood for markets, and not to meet local needs. This market orientation of farmers was recognized in the new National Forest Policy of 1988. Lately, two serious problems have been noted. First, the program remained confined only to the commercialized and monetized regions, and elsewhere made little impact.