February 17, 2017

Mountain communities in the Himalayan region are almost entirely dependent on forests for firewood even though this practice has been identified as one of the most significant causes of forest decline and a major source of indoor air pollution.

February 16, 2017

By Athar Parvaiz

February 16, 2017

By Athar Parvaiz

February 15, 2017

Cutting out the middleman has helped rural people survive as they face worsening heat and drought as a result of climate change.

February 10, 2017

By K.Rajendran

February 12, 2017

By Skand Vivek

February 07, 2017

By K. Rajendran

January 31, 2017

By Athar Parvaiz..

January 31, 2017

Future of Darjeeling tea is in doubt as erratic rains compound other problems facing the industry.

January 31, 2017

The Sikkim government is planning to convert an artificial lake, formed by a massive landslide in the state’s northern part in August last year, into a tourist spot.

But most of the people from the Lepcha community in Dzongu argue that it is a bad idea to turn a “time-bomb” into a tourist spot, 
 

By Athar Parvaiz Bhat

January 24, 2017

By Athar Parvaiz Bhat
 

January 30, 2017

Originally appeared in Catch News

February 04, 2017

With global population projected to be at least nine billion by the year 2050, insects might just be the most viable solution to satiate our protein needs.

Organic farming need not be restricted only to certain people. Pretty soon, it may be a common man’s staple, writes Anitha Pailoor.

Whenever we talk of farmers, we think of men. Usually we overlook the fact that women play a vital role in the whole agricultural process.

Article in the marathi publication Agrowon on Water issues from FEJI's participation in the IWMI conference at Anand.

Where are the good ol’ vultures?

Though organic farming has been growing the world over, its characteristics are becoming similar to conventional agriculture with the entry of big corporate bodies.

The decibel level of protests against the restrictions being placed on acquisition of land and clearance of major projects by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has notched up, with three Congress governments seeking a review of such laws. This follows close on the heels of the characterisation by the media of Jayanti Natarajan's ministry, and that of her predecessor Jairam Ramesh, as the "Green Terror" stalking the country. Indian Express columnist Tavleen Singh has even titled an October 14 piece "A ministry that needs to die".

That mobile phones outnumber toilets in the country is unlikely to change anytime soon if new phone designs continue to be greeted with typical fervor. Conversely, even if toilet designs were to outnumber the surge of new mobiles, the situation may not tilt in favour of toilets either.

Speaking at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Dr Balakrishna Pisupati, chairman of the National Biodiversity Authority of India, urged the media to spread the message on the value of biodiversity.

With the impact of climate change already visible through extreme weather events and with a worsening scenario projected for the future.

The United Nations 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP 11 CBD), underway in this southern Indian city, is lost on where to garner the billions of dollars needed to implement the ‘Aichi targets,’ due to be met by 2020.

Even before the Eleventh Conference of Parties (CoP-11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was inaugurated at Hyderabad, the battlelines were drawn in the two pre-inaugural press meetings.

With negotiations to mobilise resources for preservation of biodiversity at a major United Nations conference going nowhere, the Group of 77 and China have hinted at possible suspension of the ‘Aichi targets’ under the Nagoya Protocol.

India is a hot spot for biodiversity, being a recognised mega-diverse centre of the world and holding about a tenth of the world's plant and animal species. Today, people's needs and greed both are leading to erosion of this precious gift of evolution.

Efforts towards conserving the country’s biodiversity are hobbled by the frightening insistence that development cannot be held up.

Fayaz Ahmad’s Faim Internet Café in the Sopore township of Indian Kashmir was booming until a year ago, when police entered his premises without warning and seized all his computers.

The evidence of wide-spread hunger and malnutrition is overwhelming and everywhere, and yet so little is done to address this most fundamental issue, writes Darryl D'Monte.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's lament that the media has dubbed his government as the 'most corrupt' may not be the only blot in his stint as a career economist and politician.

Writing about science for the last eight years has changed dramatically for me with the advent of blogging and social media. In fact, at many science conferences blogging is what we are asked to do by our editors throughout the five or six days of the event that we attend.

The government must remove the subsidy on diesel, LPG and kerosene, and protect the poor from the impact through cash transfers.

Twenty two-year-old Ajay Kallu, hailing from the Bakultala village in northern Andamans, was devoured by an estuarine crocodile when he waded waist deep into a creek to fish on the morning of Aug. 1, marking the fifth fatal crocodile attack in 28 months in the remote Islands that lie at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

Estuarine crocodiles or Salt water crocodiles – also called Salties are native from the east coast of India all along the island states of South East Asia till the Northern coast of Australia. Attacks on human beings are common as Salties are the one of the 2 most aggressive crocodilians in the world – the other being the Nile Crocodile. Salties have accounted for the death of hundreds of human deaths all across South Asia’s Island creeks.

It is certainly remarkable to happen upon a 300-acre “energy forest” in the midst of interior, degraded lands, and that too, an indigenous plantation. “It’s the first of its kind anywhere in the world,” says Sam Venkatesam of Energy Plantations India (EPPI), “and it’s different from other energy plantations because it belongs to the power plant company.”

When twenty-nine-year-old Kartik Wahi graduated from the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, Illinois in 2010, he wasted no time in returning to India to self-finance a start-up company to market solar-powered irrigation pumps.

A global attempt to arrest climate change by providing firms with incentives to invest in green technology is being manipulated in India for profit.