Research Papers

This report by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reviews the importance of inland fisheries as an ecosystem service, the pressures upon them, and management approaches to sustain them and thus helps inform future approaches to conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems.

There is an urgent need for major investment in policy and management approaches that address the direct and indirect drivers of aquatic ecosystem degradation and loss of inland fisheries taking into account their role in sustainable development and human well being. The UNEP Ecosystem Management Programme (UNEP-EMP) provides an effective framework for pursuing this challenge.

This paper published by the Water for People describes Sanitation as a Business, an innovative approach to operation and maintainance challenges in household sanitation improvements, by describing the case of the implementation of the approach in the context of Malawi, by Water for People. The paper argues that programs that build latrines have consistently struggled to have impact or reach scale, and have often distorted the market environment in ways that have undermined future sanitation development.

The paper emphasises the relevance of this approach in the context of developing countries such as India by stating that the world would not be able to achieve even half of the Millennium Development Goals for sanitation at current rates of installation and consequently is projected to miss the sanitation MDG by more than 700 million people. Among the twenty two percent of those without access to improved sanitation, the greatest challenge remains in Asia and India in particular.

This evaluation study report by the Programme Evaluation Organisation, Planning Commission attempts to document the major achievements in rural water services under Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission. It does so by assessing the extent of coverage and access to improved services in the rural areas.

The article informs that access to safe drinking water remains an urgent necessity, as 30% of urban and 90% of rural households still depend completely on untreated surface or groundwater.

While access to drinking water in India has increased over the past decade, the tremendous adverse impact of unsafe water on health continues. It is estimated that about 21% of communicable diseases in India are water related.

Although some degree of intervention in terms of chlorination and monitoring of water quality exists in major cities and towns, rural India, which constitutes the bulk (70%) of the population, is usually deprived of such interventions. The population in rural India is mainly dependent on the groundwater as a source of drinking water. As a quality concern the groundwater is often found to be contaminated with fluoride, arsenic, iron and salts. In recent years, fluorosis has emerged as major public health issue in rural India.

This article published in the Indian Journal of Public Health highlights the importance of sanitation as hygienic means of dealing with health of populations and presents the history and the definition of sanitation and highlights t

It presents a summary of recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of energy service delivery through a decentralized program, which currently finds a critical place in the Government‘s energy policies and electrification targets.

The pilot phase of the Village Energy Security Programme has shown several lessons and the need for improvements.

This paper published in the journal Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge is an attempt to discuss the traditional knowledge of elderly people, their role and highlights many areas w

To provide the background hydrological information for the assessment of environmental flow requirements at four selected ‘Environmental Flow’ sites, a hydrological model was set up to simulate the catchment in the present state (with water regulation  infrastructure) and to generate the natural flows (without water regulation infrastructure).

Agriculture is the main occupation of the tribe and they have a unique way of knowing plantation season for different crops by observing the flowering of some plants. The indicator plants are peach, wild cherry, camel foot and dancing girl.

This paper published in the Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge highlights the findings of a study that correlates the indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge in assessing the nutrient availability status of agricultural soil as practised by the Nyishi tribes who use visual properties such as colour, texture and topographic positioning of land/terrain.