News and Articles

Come March and it's that time of the year again -- spring cleaning! On March 22, 2015, this takes on a slightly different meaning to some as it becomes a day to spring clean our attitudes towards water for yet another year. World Water Day looms large and with it, the current year's focus.

Professor Jay O'Keeffe is well-known to all those who are interested in the concept of environmental flow releases. The Professor has been involved in this, all over the world, since the seventies.

SOPPECOM and Water Aid have been working for the last three years on the right to water and sanitation. They have engaged in consultations with people across the nation, and used these discussions to articulate their campaign demands. The campaign has also come up with a wealth of resources on the topic but what does this right to sanitation entail? Mamata Dash explains.

Madurai, Tamil Nadu's second largest city, is now filled with buildings and roads which are eating into its age old network of tanks and canals. This change did not happen overnight. It began in the late 19th century by the British when they merged several hamlets to establish their headquarters in the region.

Known as "Hari-ke-Pattan", this wetland is the largest in the Tarn Taran Sahib district of the Punjab in northern India and has the Harike Lake in its deeper part [1]. Its rich biodiversity plays an important role in maintaining the hydrological balance in the catchment area. It also supports a vast range of migratory birds including a number of globally threatened species [1].

The Loktak lake in Manipur is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India. It is famous for the phumdis, which are isolated collections of heterogenous masses of vegetation, soil, and organic matter at various stages of decomposition, floating over it [1]. It is referred to as the only floating lake in the world because of the phumdis [2].

Fisheries form an important component of the economy of Jammu and Kashmir, which along with agriculture, contributes a significant 23% to its Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP). Besides being an important allied activity to agriculture, it contributes significantly to the agricultural economy and also generates self-employment.

An engineer or an ecologist talking about water may not cause many heads to turn, but when they do it through poetry, there is a chance that more people will take notice.

With over 620 million defecating in the open in India, do we need a new approach to curb this practice? The force of habit is such that even households with toilets have around forty percent of adults defecating in the open. But, does curbing open defecation necessarily lead to significant improvements in child health outcomes like diarrhoea, anaemia, parasite infection and growth?

Culture, recreation, and geology are some of the reasons people cite for visiting the Himalayas. You can literally get drenched in these topics in some of the waterfalls that the Northern Himalayas are home to. Read on to get the full scoop on places you can (and should!) visit. For the geeks among you, we have also explored a bit of the history and science behind it.