-Down to Earth The IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land says land-based carbon sinks are not limitless The carbon cycle is classically described in terms of ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’ of emissions. The electricity sector, which converts fossil fuels into light and heat, is a source (as are most human activities since the dawn of the industrial age). Identifying sinks is trickier. We know that, as a general principle, more forest cover...

-Down to Earth Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from overexploitation All the 20 river basins of the country share the story of the Cauvery: how human interference has changed every river’s form and flow pattern over the past few decades. Water in the country’s three major rivers — the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganga — has...

-Down to Earth The court’s suggestions, like making MSP a legal right and increasing it to thrice the cost of production, are practical but need effort in implementation, say experts The Punjab and Haryana high court recently recommended that minimum support price (MSP) be made farmers’ legal right and it be set at three times the cost of production. But will these or a slew of other measures the court suggested address...

-Down to Earth To double farmers’ income reduce the number of farmers, suggest policy makers Among senior officials in the Union government and members of the Niti Aayog, conversations now start and end with one subject: “doubling farmers’ income by 2022”. Clearly, the obsession with open defecation-free India is over as, unofficially, India has achieved the target before the October 2019 deadline. But the new target to double farmers’ income by 2022 has...

-Down to Earth The amendment to the RTI Act does not deserve the assent of the President, writes former Central Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu in the second of this two-part series The Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions told the House that Parliament's competence to enact a law to give effect to the citizens' right to obtain information is located in Entry 97 of the Union List...