Ecology and Environment

With tihs, they can improve water and sanitation service regulation and provision at international, national and local levels. Directed primarily at community groups, human rights NGOs, rights-based development practitioners and aid workers, this handbook aims to strengthen human rights-based advocacy by providing innovative and practical suggestions that activists and organisations can use in their work. It also acts as a resource guide for finding further information.

Water and sanitation are essential for living a healthy life with dignity. However, around a billion people across the world lack access to a safe and sufficient water supply to cover their basic needs. Over 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation and nearly 1.2 billion face the indignity of open defecation every day.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 is seriously off track, with sanitation severely lagging behind. For example, estimates suggest that at current rates of progress, sub-Saharan Africa will miss the MDG water target by about 25 years, while the sanitation target may not be reached until well into the 22nd century.

The state government's investments in supplying potable water under the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) scheme which envisaged a no tanker supply' end to the scheme is critiqued. The authors note that the project mainly concentrated on asset creation, neglecting operation and maintenance resulting in limited improvement in villages, with respect to water supply.

Content Courtesy: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India

Press release: Indian event at Cancun re-emphasises importance of equity, 7th December 2010

India hosted a major event at the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference at Cancun, where the critical issue of equity and equitable access to carbon space was emphasised. 

India's Minister for Environment and Forests and Head of Delegation, Shri Jairam Ramesh personally chaired the side event that had presentations by Prof. T. Jayaraman, Tata Inst. Of Social Sciences, India, Mr. Martin Khor, Executive Dir., South Centre, Geneva and Dr. Harald, ERC & Univ. Of Cape Town, South Africa.

Download the entire press release here.

Content Courtesy: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India

Author: Madhav Gadgil

In view of the environmental sensitivity and ecological significance of the Western Ghats region and the complex nature of its geography, as well as the possible impacts of climate change on this region, the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India constituted a Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel to assess the current status of ecology of the Western Ghats region. The panel aimed at identifying ecologically sensitive areas in the Western Ghat region and making recommendations for the conservation, protection and rejuvenation of the region. This report presents a brief summary of the key issues that were dwelt on to understand the situation of the Western ghats and the key findings of the evaluation.

This website by the Yale University provides information on the global and countrywise ratings for environmental performance in the form of Environmental Performance Indices (EPI) for different countries. The site also provides details of EPI scores for India in comparison with the average scores globally.

This index was developed from the Pilot Environmental Performance Index, first published in 2002, and designed to supplement the environmental targets set forth in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Performance_Index)

Rivers, streams and lakes are the vital link in the water cycle that ensure that life as we know it can continue to flourish on earth. Unfortunately, as Dr Rajendra Singh points out, there is no river in India that has been spared from encroachment and pollution. The massive Ganga Action Plan has failed to clean the Ganges.

One of the main reasons cited for inadequate representation of biodiversity is a lack of readily available information on the status and distribution of inland water taxa.

In response to this need for information, the IUCN Species Programme, in collaboration with Zoo Outreach Organisation (ZOO) conducted the Eastern Himalaya Freshwater Biodiversity Assessment, a review of the global conservation status of 1,073 freshwater species belonging to three taxonomic groups – fishes (520 taxa), molluscs (186 taxa), and odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) (367 taxa). 

Other groups that include freshwater species that have been comprehensively assessed are freshwater crabs (assessed in 2008, and 57 species of crab are present within the assessment region), mammals, birds, and amphibians and their assessments can be accessed on the IUCN Red List. 

A civil society consultation was held on “Regenerating natural resources and rural livelihoods in rainfed areas of India” by WASSAN at Hyderabad in December 2010 to discuss priorities for the twelfth five year plan. The Planning Commission, Government of India has been steering the process of development in India by conceptualizing five year plans and had sought inputs from civil society organizations, activists groups, networks of CBOs / NGOs, donors and others for preparing an approach paper for twelfth plan.

The objective of the consultation workshop was to contribute to the process of defining broad contours of twelfth plan with a focus on rural livelihoods the thrust area being policy framework, funding support, institutional arrangements etc., by -

• Consolidating the lessons from good practices in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods in the country, that could be integrated in twelfth five year plan.
• Systematically articulating issues and concerns (bottlenecks) in promoting and protecting rural livelihoods, which could be addressed in the twelfth five year plan.

This pond and wetland is the first stage of creating a wildlife field station and research center for WildlifeSOS in Ramdurga Valley.

The wetland will be both for habitat and as a safe water source for wildlife. Concurrent with the construction of the wetland will be the design process for the field station and site. Volunteers will assist in both these processes with the primary task of completing construction of the wetlands. Long afternoon breaks and evening's slow relaxation will be time for learning, discussions and wandering conversations. Areas of discussion may include: Permaculture basics (principles, flows, patterns, zonation), site analysis, water, soil, plants and cropping, animals systems, appropriate technology, invisible structures (economic, cultural and social systems), design and local to global sustainability.

Forwarded to the portal by: Dr.Yaduraju, ICRISAT

Organizer: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

Venue: Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India