Cultural observers like Ramanujan and Max Muller have implied that untruthfulness amongst Indians... more Cultural observers like Ramanujan and Max Muller have implied that untruthfulness amongst Indians is prevalent because o f its approval by ancient behaviour codes. Ramanujan also attributed a lack o f universality in Indian thought to the same codes. While the ancient codes contain many assertions we would consider problematic today, lack o f universality is not one o f them as fa r as preference fo r truthfulness is concerned. The only occasion wherein any o f the ancient codes prefer lies to truth is when someone's life was at stake. The quantitative prevalence o f untruthfulness in different groups can only be empirically estimated by carefully designed questionnaires or experimentally. To minimize getting answers that the respondents will assume are expected o f them, the first investigations should deal with instances o f petty untruthfulness, where the consequences are trivial.
NIAS aims at evolving strategies for bridging the gaps in risk perception, risk communication, an... more NIAS aims at evolving strategies for bridging the gaps in risk perception, risk communication, and risk management between the experts and the public.
Dialogues Across Disciplines: From the NIAS Archives (NIAS Special Publication)
NIAS eBooks, 2012
This collection of essays contains the text of selected talks delivered at NIAS on various occasi... more This collection of essays contains the text of selected talks delivered at NIAS on various occasions. In the book they have been arranged in a chronological order. We did not attempt to group essays on related topics. We summarize briefly these essays here and link similar ones together. A reader may consider reading them in the order indicated here. J.R.D. Tata's piece provides the historical background to how NIAS came to be established and demonstrates his pursuit of the idea over a period of 24 years. R.L. Kapur delves into the psychological bases for both violence and its inverse, which he calls empathy and proposes several principles which could be invoked to reduce violence in India. It still has an uncanny relevance today
Global Environmental Change-human and Policy Dimensions, Dec 1, 1991
A strategy for a successful climate protection convention must highlight the role of equity in or... more A strategy for a successful climate protection convention must highlight the role of equity in order to bring more nations to the bargaining table. The authors propose two commercial energy protocols for consideration by negotiators in this light. The first links international trading in greenhouse-gas emission 'rights' to a country's historical per capita carbon emissions. The charge for these rights should be based on the negotiated reduction in global emissions and the demand for them, via the marketplace. The second requires inefficient countries to make steady improvements in energy efficiency or fuel substitution away from carbon as their economies develop.
Overall, at least 1.6 billion people-one-fourth of the world's population-currently live without ... more Overall, at least 1.6 billion people-one-fourth of the world's population-currently live without electricity and this number has hardly changed in absolute terms since 1970. And yet, the electricity required for people to read at night, pump a minimal amount of drinking water and listen to radio broadcasts would amount to less than 1 percent of overall global energy demand. Developing and emerging economies face thus a twofold energy challenge in the 21 st century: Meeting the needs of billions of people who still lack access to basic, modern energy services while simultaneously participating in a global transition to clean, low-carbon energy systems. And historic rates of progress toward increased efficiency, de-carbonization, greater fuel diversity and lower pollutant emissions need to be greatly accelerated in order to do so. To a significant extent, fortunately, the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions may be aligned with the pursuit of other energy-related objectives, such as developing indigenous renewable resources and reducing local forms of pollution. In the near term, however, there will be tensions. Sustainable energy policies are more likely to succeed if they also contribute toward other societal and economic development objectives. Governments should look across policies to maximize positive synergies where they exist and avoid creating cost-cutting incentives.
A method is proposed to measure emissions of air pollutants from unrented biomass-burning cooksto... more A method is proposed to measure emissions of air pollutants from unrented biomass-burning cookstoves and to incorporate a measure of these emissions in the existing way of rating cookstoves by thermal efficiency. Emission factors for the three metal stoves tested burning Acacia nilotica were found to range between 13 and 68 g kg-I for carbon monoxide and between 1.1 and 3.9 g kg-i for total suspended particulates and to increase with increasing thermal efficiency both within a stove and across stoves. Emissions for a uniform standard task-the proposed performance index-were, however, lower for total suspended particulates for the more efficient stoves but higher for CO, indicating that the increases in efficiency were not able to offset the greatly increased CO emission factors.
Incremental costs of wetland conservation: case studies in Asia and the Pacific
The cost of protecting a wetland and its biodiversity from the adverse impacts of development is ... more The cost of protecting a wetland and its biodiversity from the adverse impacts of development is an important input into the choice between development alternatives and into negotiations on sharing the cost of such protection. Although the concept of incremental cost has long been used in economics, finance and business to help decision-makers choose applied to environmental decision-making. This publication illustrates how the incremental cost of development to protect the functions and benefits of wetlands should between alternatives, it is only since Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Global Environment Facility gave it prominence that it has been systematically be compared to the consequences of development that provides no protection. Incremental cost is the cost of a decision to do one thing instead of another. Here is it the additional cost, relative to a baseline course of action affecting a wetland, of a decision to adopt a different course of action that not only meets the original national priorities but also protects biodiversity. This book has two introductory chapters, Biodiversity and the Global Significance of Asian Wetlands and Incremental Costs of Conserving Wetland Biodiversity, complemented by four case studies from the Asia-Pacific region.
Financing and partnerships for technology transfer
... ate problems for environmentally sound technologies if, as is often the case, they involve ..... more ... ate problems for environmentally sound technologies if, as is often the case, they involve ... Increased unemployment, white elephant projects, rural-urban migration, foreign debts and growing technological ... that offer a variety of financing options for foreign export and investment. ...
Promoting stoves that burn wood and other biofuels more efficiently is one of the means to reduce... more Promoting stoves that burn wood and other biofuels more efficiently is one of the means to reduce fuel consumption, but such efficient stoves may also emit more carbon monoxide and total suspended particulates. In an earlier study, a standard chamber method was proposed to estimate emission factors from burning fuelwood (Acacia ni
Uploads
Papers by Dilip Ahuja