A slow trickle of reforms won’t do. Nor can government follow a policy of ‘do no harm’ The change of guard at the finance ministry has brought in a cautious optimism among investors. In the first few days of the month, stock prices moved up and $1.3 billion of portfolio investment came into India, perhaps reflecting improved investor sentiment.

Evidences of global warming are unmistakable, according to a new report on climate change which presents a list of indicators including melting glaciers and rising sea level. The report prepared by the British Met Office and its US equivalent has provided the “greatest evidence we have ever had” that the world is warming.

An interesting sidelight to the Family Planning Summit in London last week was that it was held amidst a double-dip recession. This was symbolic because a recession of course means a slump in demand and consumption. And that neatly links up to a view that I heard from some key delegates – that the rate of population growth in developing countries must be ’stabilised’ because it is adding to carbon emissions and climate change.

Most glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and around it are rapidly melting says the latest study based on 30 years of satellite data and also actual measurements. This upturns results of a study published earlier this year based on satellite measurements over seven years which said that Tibetan glaciers are growing.

India’s agricultural research system seems well poised to tackle climate change head-on. Apart from gearing itself up for meeting the immediate challenges with the available technologies and knowledge, it is also putting in place a hi-tech, multi-disciplinary research infrastructure to provide the research-and-development backing required for combating climate extremes in the future. Some of the technical facilities being created for this purpose are unique in Asia, if not in the whole world.

Sea levels may rise much higher than previously thought, as a new study on fossil corals has found that warmer climes in the past promoted dramatic melting of polar ice. Researchers built an extensive database by compiling age and elevation data of fossil corals that live near the sea surface, using a model to factor in the physics of how changing masses of ice sheets would affect regional sea level at the various fossil coral sites, a statement from the Australian National University said.

A committee of experts will soon collate the comments received for the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) report, said Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister for Environment and Forests. The Ministry had received around 1,500 comments for the panel’s report, Ms. Natarajan told The Hindu on Sunday.

Every time we receive a call on our fancy mobile phones and spend hours talking over it, little do we care to think about the effect the gadget could have on our bodies and the environment as a whole. But while the service operators compete with each other to add more customers to their accounts and put up cell phone towers in every possible corner of the country to expand network coverage, experts feel that it is high time that multi-disciplinary studies should be undertaken to understand the impact of radiation from cell phone towers on the environment.

Indian consumers feel the most guilty about their environmental impact even though they have a smaller average footprint than consumers in wealthy countries, a survey said Thursday. The 17-nation study by the Washington-based National Geographic Society found a “major disconnect” as consumers in rich nations had the least sustainable lifestyles but also felt the least guilty about their impact.

As the world looks for a zero waste solution, waste pickers from Mumbai are gaining a new respect and are proud of contributing to real environmental sustainability, says Sushila Sable, a waste picker who has been attending the UN climate change conferences for the last four years. Not only has she been participating in these meetings — at Copenhagen in 2009, Tianjin, China, 2010, Durban, South Africa, 2010 and last month’s meet in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — but as a member of the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers, she has also spoken to delegates on the story of road to zero waste in this city.