WHO releases new guidelines on tobacco product regulation - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

WHO releases new guidelines on tobacco product regulation

The new guidelines provide practical, stepwise approaches to implementing tobacco testing.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched new guidelines on the role that tobacco product regulations can play in reducing tobacco demand, saving lives and raising revenues for health services to treat tobacco-related diseases, in the context of a comprehensive tobacco control.
The new guide, titled ‘Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity’, and a collection of country approaches to regulation of menthol in tobacco products, presented in the publication, titled ‘Case studies for regulatory approaches to tobacco products– Menthol in tobacco products’, were launched at the 2018 World Conference on Tobacco or Health recently.
Many countries have developed advanced policies to reduce the demand for tobacco, which kills over 7 million people annually, but governments can do much more to implement regulations to control tobacco use, especially by exploiting tobacco product regulation.
Dr. Douglas Bettcher, WHO’s Director of the Department for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), said: “The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), a global treaty established under the auspices of the WHO to combat the tobacco epidemic, has played a critical role in tobacco control. The launch of these important publications will further aid the implementation of Articles 9 and 10 of the WHO FCTC, contributing to building tobacco product regulation capacity in WHO member states”.
He further said: “Tobacco product regulation is an under-utilised tool which has a critical role to play in reducing tobacco use. The tobacco industry has enjoyed years of little or no regulation, mainly due to the complexity of tobacco product regulation and lack of appropriate guidance in this area. These new tools provide useful resource to countries to either introduce or improve existing tobacco product regulation provisions and end the tobacco industry’s ‘reign’.”
“Only a handful of countries currently regulate the contents, design features and emissions of tobacco products,” said Dr. Bettcher. “This means that tobacco products are one of the few openly available consumer products that are virtually unregulated in terms of contents, design features and emissions.”
Most countries hesitate to implement policies, due in part to the highly technical nature of such policy interventions and the difficulties in translating science into regulation, explained Dr. Vinayak Prasad, who leads WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative.
“Failure to regulate represents a missed opportunity as tobacco product regulation, in the context of comprehensive control, is a valuable tool that complements other tried and tested tobacco control interventions, such as raising taxes, and ensuring smoke-free environments,” he added.
The new guidelines provide practical, stepwise approaches to implementing tobacco testing. Such guidance is relevant to a wide range of countries in various settings, including those with inadequate resources to establish a testing facility.
This laboratory guide is a useful resource for countries, and provides regulators and policymakers with comprehensible information on how to test tobacco products, what products to test, and how to use testing data in a meaningful way to support regulation. (Source: The Hindu)


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WHO releases new guidelines on tobacco product regulation

Cauvery Verdict: SC reduces Tamil Nadu’s water share, Karnataka’s increased -Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

Cauvery Verdict: SC reduces Tamil Nadu’s water share, Karnataka’s increased

The Supreme Court of India on February 16, 2018 reduced Tamil Nadu’s share of Cauvery water by 14.75 tmcft water per year, diverting the same to Karnataka.
The court directed the Karnataka government to release 177.25 tmcft of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu from its inter-state Biligundlu dam, which is down from the state’s earlier allocation of 192 TMC water.
Significance
Karnataka will now have an enhanced share of 14.75 tmcft water per year.
Earlier, in accordance with the Cauvery Water Tribunal’s order in 2007, Karnataka had a share of 270 tmcft of Cauvery water. Now it will go up to 284.75 tmcft.
Judgement: Key Highlights
• The judgement was delivered by a bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Amitava Roy and A M Khanwilkar.
• During the ruling, the CJI stated that the Cauvery tribunal’s 2007 award of 30 tmcft water to Kerala and 7 tmcft water to Puducherry will remain unchanged.
• The apex court also allowed Tami Nadu to draw an additional 10 tmcft 'groundwater' from a total of 20 tmcft beneath the Cauvery basin.
• The court stated that the decision to increase the water share of Karnataka was taken due to the 10 tmcft groundwater and 4.75 tmcft drinking water requirement for Bengaluru residents.
• The apex court stated that drinking water requirement has to be kept on the highest pedestal.
• The court’s order on the Cauvery water allocation will continue to hold for the next 15 years.
Background
The bench had heard the appeals filed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala against the 2007 ruling of the tribunal on September 20, 2017 and had reserved its verdict.
In its current decision, the apex court has upheld the 2007 decision of Cauvery Water Tribunal, while making some amendments
The Cauvery Water Tribunal, in its ruling in 2007, had allocated 192 TMC water to Tamil Nadu, 270 TMC water to Karnataka, 30 tmcft to Kerala and 7 tmcft to Puducherry per year.
Cauvery Water Dispute
• The water sharing of Cauvery River has been a major source of conflict between the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka
• The origin of this conflict can be traced back to two agreements in 1892 and 1924, which had taken place between the then Madras Presidency and the Kingdom of Mysore.
• The 802 km long Cauvery River has 44,000 km2 basin area in Tamil Nadu and 32,000 km2 basin area in Karnataka.
• Based on inflow Karnataka has been demanding its due share of water from the river. It stated that the pre-independence agreements were invalid and majorly favour the Madras Presidency, and demanded a renegotiated settlement based on equitable sharing of the waters.
• Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, stated that it has already developed almost 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km2) of land and as a result has come to depend very heavily on the existing pattern of usage and any change in the pattern will adversely affect the livelihood of millions of farmers in the state.
• The Government of India constituted a tribunal in 1990 to look into the matter.
• After hearing arguments of all the parties involved for the next 16 years, the tribunal delivered its final verdict on February 5, 2007.


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Cauvery Verdict: SC reduces Tamil Nadu’s water share, Karnataka’s increased

India, Oman sign key agreement to bolster defence cooperation - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

India, Oman sign key agreement to bolster defence cooperation

The agreement with Oman can be seen as a move that bolsters India’s strategy to counter China in the Indian Ocean region where it is increasingly making inroads.

India and Oman on Monday signed a key pact that extends dry docking and other facilities to Indian naval ships in the strategically located Gulf country.
It can be seen as a move that bolsters India’s strategy to counter Beijing in the Indian Ocean region where it is increasingly making inroads.
The two countries have also agreed to hold joint military exercises to shore up their defence partnership, a day after India announced its first naval exercises with another Gulf partner, the United Arab Emirates.
A supplementary pact to an existing defence agreement was among eight accords signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Oman that concluded on Monday.
According to Oman News Agency, the pact envisages use of the strategically located Duqm port and dry dock for maintenance of Indian military vessels—a development that Indian analysts have welcomed given the increasing presence of Chinese ships and submarines in the Indian Ocean.
Former chief of the Indian Navy Admiral Arun Prakash said China’s increasing “footholds” in India’s periphery from Myanmar to Pakistan and establishment of a base in Djibouti were a matter of concern for India.
“China is a Pacific country,” he said, referring to its large coastline along the Pacific Ocean. “So the question is what is it doing in the Indian Ocean? India is at the centre of the Indian Ocean. So India does need to respond” to Chinese moves which “are quite opaque”.
“Duqm is a very strategically located port. So this is a very positive development. This is good news for us,” Prakash added.
During his visit, Modi held talks with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said and others.
A joint statement issued on Monday said the “two sides expressed satisfaction over the current state of bilateral relations, especially the robust security and defence cooperation, and agreed to further expand their cooperation to new areas of mutual interest, including space, cybersecurity, energy security, renewable energy and food security with a view to taking the strategic partnership to a higher level”.
To provide a boost to defence ties, the two countries agreed to “regular holding of joint exercises by the three defence forces, training of navy, air force and army officials, as also cooperation in the area of coastal defence and through participation in defence exhibitions”.
Besides this, “the two sides agreed to enhance cooperation to strengthen maritime security in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean regions, vital for the security and prosperity of both countries. They further agreed to promote bilateral collaboration for humanitarian assistance and evacuation in natural disasters and conflict situations”, the statement said.
The India-Oman joint statement also strongly condemned “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, wherever committed and by whomever”.
It “declared that there could be no justification for any act of terrorism anywhere”.
The two countries also agreed on the need to “isolate the sponsors and supporters of terrorism” and urged the international community to “take urgent action against all such entities which support terrorism and use it as an instrument of policy. The two sides agreed to coordinate efforts to counter extremism and radicalization and misuse of religion by groups and countries for inciting hatred and perpetrating acts of terrorism”, the statement added.
On the trade front, Modi and Qaboos “directed their finance and trade ministers to work together to find ways and means to substantially increase the flow of bilateral investments and trade”.
“Both sides underlined the ongoing transformation of the economies of India and Oman and emphasized the importance of expanding trade and investment ties to drive the strategic engagement forward,” it said.
Modi “welcomed the invitation to Indian companies to invest in various sectors in the special economic zones of Oman, including SEZs in Duqm, Sohar and Salalah. The Indian prime minister offered India’s partnership and cooperation in areas of priority, such as minerals and mining, manufacturing, logistics, infrastructure, tourism, agriculture and fisheries, IT and IT-enabled services, skills development and innovation.” (Source: Livemint)


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India, Oman sign key agreement to bolster defence cooperation