Ecology and Environment

“Can you see the alternating bands of light and shadow in the sky?” Chattar Singh asks me. When I nod in affirmation, he continues, “This is Mogh. There are clouds where the sun is setting right now. If we get a favourable wind, these clouds will reach here and we may get rain by night. In desert, people live by such clues from nature.”  

Maharashtra approves cost overrun in irrigation projects, set to complete Gosikhurd project

A majority of states fail to stop overexploitation of groundwater

In order to celebrate 20 years of ATREE and to call attention to current challenges in biodiversity conservation, environment and development, ATREE has organized a two day international conference in January, 2017.

Jaman Ram, a resident of Bhikia Sain, a tehsil in Uttarakhand, remembers fishing with his father in the Ramganga. “We could catch 80-100 kilograms of fish a day. That is no longer possible,” he says. Shafiq of Haldwani shares an unsettling memory of the Ramganga. As a young man on a holiday, he was paddling in the river near Marchula when the rock he was standing on shifted.

Going by the statistics from the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Tamil Nadu’s coastline is densely populated with 573 fishing villages along 13 coastal districts. The story is slightly different around the urban and peri-urban coastline, thanks to the ongoing gentrification of the coastline in most parts of urban India.

Lingaraj Jena is a worried man. At 86, he is one of the older fishermen in Berhampura village, an island on the Chilika lake in Odisha. Though he no longer goes for fishing due to old age, he is worried about the opening of new sea mouths; he knows it is not good news for the fishing communities he is a part of that depend on the Chilika for their livelihood.

No final approval for Ken-Betwa river link as claimed by Centre

Kerala hit by worst drought in 115 years

Shalu’s household was evicted from Koyla Basti of the Yamuna pushta (embankment), a massive slum cluster on the banks of the Yamuna river in the year 2004. Earthmoving machines bulldozed thousands of homes at the site which was to host the Commonwealth Games of 2010.