Climate Change

Sexagenarian Radha Madhavan's (name changed) voice carries a shade of gloom even as she rationalises her children's decision to leave their parental home for good. “My husband and I totally understand it. Do they not have a point when they say they do not wish to return to this wretched island, considering their own families’ safety?

Come monsoon, the villages in the Sundarbans islands witness nature’s fury with floodwaters overriding all boundaries and inundating huge tracts of land. As such, the earthen embankments, stretching to 3600 kms on the 54 inhabited islands out of a total of 102 in the Sundarbans, protect scores of people from floods and tidal waves.

Small islands in southern Kerala lakes sinking

Summers get hotter, rains decline and crops fail. The conflict between people increase and migration in search of better lands and skies begin. Sounds familiar? We are not talking about Marathwada here. This is how the lives of our ancestors played out thousands of years ago.

Vikram Patel, a 71-year-old farmer in Chidavad village of Dewas district in Madhya Pradesh is one of the first farmers to have embraced the idea of farm ponds to increase the groundwater level in his farm.

Marathwada has been witnessing severe drought over the last few years. This year has seen the worst with many farmer suicides reported [1].

A number of Asian countries are going through environmental crisis. Nowhere is the impact felt so seriously than in India, where the crisis threatens to affect survival. It is also impacting biodiversity, ecology and livelihoods. In this context, it becomes important to understand how nature and the current environmental crisis are being addressed in policy discourses.

Urban water bodies have an important role in the urban ecology. It is not just a source or water collected somewhere but is an integral part of life--a haven for different types of trees, insects, birds and small animals.

SC directs Centre to prepare National Disaster Plan, implement MGNREGA, Food Security Act to tackle drought

The farmers of Jharkhand have long been depending on lac farming for their livelihood. Lac, a resin extensively used in preparation of a range of products - from cosmetics to ammunition - is cultivated on a variety of trees, mostly fruit-bearing and shady trees like Ber, Kusum, Palash and Sal.