2003

 This document includes the details of the Model Municipal Law and includes the details of :Read More

The second international symposium on the management of large rivers for fisheries was held by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and Mekong River Commission on 11 - 14 February 2003 in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. It had three primary objectives: (a) To provide a forum to review and synthesise the latest information on large rivers; (b) To raise the political, public and scientific awareness of the importance of river systems, the living aquatic resources they support and the people that depend on them; and (c) To contribute to better management, conservation and restoration of the living aquatic resources of large rivers.

The symposium was organised in six sessions:

Session 1: Status of rivers
Session 2: Value of river fisheries
Session 3: Fisheries ecology and conservation
Session 4: Management of river fisheries
Session 5: Statistics and information
Session 6: Synthesis

Over 220 river scientists and managers from around the world attended the symposium. Contributed papers represented 96 rivers from 61 river basins from all continents and climatic zones. It came up with the following recommendations for action -

• Improve the valuation of living river resources in order to contribute to equitable and sustainable management of fishery resources and properly place the fishery in the context of the other uses of rivers.
• Direct greater effort to better understanding the social and economic aspects of fisheries to support policy and management priorities; livelihood approaches will be a valuable tool.
• Communicate and engage with environment and water resources managers within the context of multi-use of water in order to accurately assess impacts and to sustain the benefits of river fisheries in an equitable manner.
• Develop processes that facilitate the users and beneficiaries of the fishery resource to assume greater control of its management.
• Establish appropriate mechanisms at national and basin level to enable negotiation for the needs of communities dependent upon the living aquatic resources. In particular further regulations need to be elaborated to protect general ecosystem function and provide for environmental flows.
• Use instruments such as the freshwater eco-regions approach, the Ramsar Convention and the guidelines for water allocation suggested by the World Commission on Dams, to enhance planning for conservation and sustainable use of river habitats.
• Incorporate ecological flow requirements of river-floodplain systems into development plans and impact assessments that affect river flows, taking into account the seasonality of the system and the environmental cues needed by the fish for migration and reproduction.
• Rehabilitate degraded ecosystems wherever possible. Prioritize schemes that ensure connectivity and protection of critical habitats.

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This report deals with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's (CAG's) performance audit of Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) in 2010 and was conducted as a follow up audit of the earlier report on AIBP (No 15 of 2004) to assess whether the performance of AIBP had improved, and also whether the key issues highlighted in the earlier report had been appropriately addressed.Read More

This paper by National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) is based on a prospective, community based study in an impoverished urban site in Kolkata in order to measure the burden of cholera, describe its epidemiology, and search for potential risk factors that could be addressed by public health strategies. The study population was enumerated at the beginning and end of the study period. Surveillance through five field outposts and two referral hospitals for acute, watery, non-bloody diarrhoea was conducted from May 2003 to April 2004.Read More