Research Papers

Kerala, flanked on the west by the Arabian Sea and on the east by the Western Ghats is bestowed with enviable natural resources. It has 44 rivers spanning its lush green landscape and rainfall that averages as high as 3000 mm a year.

Highly advanced community level drinking water treatment facilities are increasingly being contemplated as good quality water supply solutions in locations where water sources are unreliable, and not available inside or near households.

As many as 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation globally. 710 million of these people live in urban areas. In India alone, 769 million people lack access to improved sanitation and as high as 597 million people defecate in the open.

Shared sanitation facilities in India

Four years ago, the international community at the Durban climate summit agreed to establish an international binding climate agreement as the current Kyoto protocol is set to expire in 2020. Closer to the Paris summit, countries were to prepare a post-2020 action plan on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Rivers are the not just the lifeline of our country, but life itself. We may revere them, even worship them but we continue to pollute, choke, and poison their waters. A river, its catchment area, and its floodplains have evolved over millions of years, and once damaged, may not be easy to reclaim.

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.”

76 million people lack access to safe drinking water in India thus increasing their risk to mortality from water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid, and cholera. The poor are much more likely to be affected by unsafe drinking water than those who are financially better off.

Government supported watershed development projects in India underwent a paradigm shift in 1994 with the advent of guidelines for the Watershed Development Programme as well as a number of pathbreaking guidelines that introduced innovative protocols that placed a strong emphasis on community participation. Development fun

Perchlorate is a chemical that is extensively used in the arms and ammunition industry.

According to a United Nations Children’s Fund Resource report, 70% of India’s water supply is polluted with sewage effluents. It also ranks very low at 120 among the 122 nations in terms of quality of water available to its citizens.