Journal article
There has been a tremendous amount of commentary and even controversy surrounding the deadly mudslide in north-western Nicaragua that killed between 1,800-2,200 people, destroyed two villages, and became the rallying point for international environmentalists condemning Central American land use policies and deforestation. With the recent highly moving visit to the site by U.S. President Bill...
In the northern highland sierra of Ecuador, marketing of medicinal teas on a micro-enterprise and supplementary income level offers an opportunity to apply indigenous knowledge to sustainable grassroots development. At the same, this type of project promotes in situ conservation of both indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. This article presents and discusses a project that is currently...
The world is three-quarters water and the Latin American and Caribbean region is considered to have comparatively greater availability of this resource: an estimated 30% of the world's fresh water. But human activities are besieging this wealth of water, threatening both its quality and quantity.
Ecuador is not unfamiliar with this reality. The internal water resources available...
The 1990s have been marked by an increasingly acrimonious debate over modern trends in agriculture: the controversy over the so-called Terminator technology, the scandal of the turmeric and Basmati patents claimed by American companies, the imposition of a global trading and patent regime under the World Trade Organisation, and others. Shorn of its acrimony, this debate is welcome, for it is...
The Afghan Hindukush region has, over the years, played host to renegades Islamic and otherwise. So recent reports of Al Qaeda training camps being re-activated in eastern Afghanistan and unruly warlords refusing to surrender power and arms to Karzai's government may come as no surprise. What is perhaps more surprising is the possibility that Afghanistan's predicament reflects a growing global...
The article introduces the importance of fresh and clean water for human survival and maintenance of ecosystem on land. It outlines the concept of integrated water resource management and its essential ingredients for sustainable development. The atmospheric, geospheric and biospheric interactions in Himalayas are briefly dealt with. Himalayan snow and ice reservoirs, its lake systems and...
Mugwort (Artemisia spp.), common plant in Japan and Nepal mountains, has been valuable species for spiritual and material uses. Various products are produced from mugwort plant in Japan, whereas it is still limited to traditional and domestic uses in Nepal. Industrial use of mugwort plant may change the economy of rural people in Nepal through generating employment and income. Sharing Japanese...
It has been noted that a main problem faced is that actions taken are above people's heads, without asking the people: for example, when well-wishing foreigners create their own NGOs for the 'protection' of a country's people and valleys... These outsiders just involve a few people in their projects, so the rest of the people stay away. They just say: "There is an NGO at work, so why...
In 2002, as a follow up of the III Mainland Montane South East Asia (MMSEA) Conference on Indigenous Knowledge, Biodiversity and Local Governance in Mountain Areas of SE-Asia in Lijiang, China, 15 of the participants from Vietnam, Lao PDR, Thailand and SW-China established a regional network to support the retention and revitalization of Indigenous Knowledge within ethnic communities. The...
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