Chicu Lokgariwar

The theme for the 2016 UN World Water Day is 'Water and Jobs'. What is your opinion of the chosen theme?

The Mandovi river is picture perfect. She is the wide, placid river fringed by the coconut palms and dotted by the boats that we think of when we think of Goa.

Forest guards in India have fought many things over time in the course of their daily work--poachers, irate citizens, even animals at times! But they are now facing a threat that may well be beyond their capacity to overcome. A threat that is not just responsible for the death of individual animals, but for the destruction of entire groups of species--climate change.

No temple is as venerated in Uttarakhand as the little unassuming naulas. These small hut-like structures dot the mountains and hold within them a great treasure--water. Usually made of stone masonry with pyramid-like slate roofs, every naula respresents within it a residing spirit which can range from a simple stone piece to an ornately carved statue.

"If you do good work on the ground, policy will happen", says Himanshu Kulkarni of ACWADAM. This has proven to be in true at least in the case of springs.

It was a sultry Sunday afternoon in Goa, the time traditionally reserved for heavy lunches followed by long siestas but the small crowd gathered at Arjuntree One in Margao defied the stereotype.

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When I first spoke with Bhagoti Devi, I attempted to break the ice by telling her how warmly our mutual acquaintances spoke of her. She was nonchalant. "Of course they will recommend you speak to me”, she said. “After all, it took a lot of hard work to have such a thick forest standing here.”

The Galo tribe has lived in the Eastern Himalayan forests for centuries. Like their neighbours, this tribe had a well-defined territory, the boundaries of which were marked by various topographical features such as rock formations or mountain ridges.

It was 1995.