-Down to Earth As many as 2,067 lives lost to floods in India through the year, the highest in the world due to climate change-induced events Floods and Cyclone Amphan in India accounted for maximum loss of lives globally due to climate change-triggered events in 2020. The cyclone, which ravaged Sunderbans in the southern fringe of West Bengal and hinterland including Kolkata in May 2020, led to “the biggest displacement” in world...

-Down to Earth The time to put off the inevitable question about human relationship to nature is long past. Our assumption that we can control and modify nature without repercussions is a fallacy Lofty mountains that touch the azure skies, gentle hills clothed in dense tropical forests and evergreen valleys — the Western Ghats nurture a variety of ecosystems not found in any other part of the world. Spread over 164,280 square kilometres,...

-Scroll.in/ IndiaSpend.com Twelve per cent of India’s land is prone to Landslides, and the country accounted for 18% of worldwide deaths in such cases from 2004 to 2016. Six days of relentless rain had saturated the soil on the rolling slopes of Rajamala hamlet in Anamalai hills – which support tea and coffee plantations – in Idukki district of Kerala. On August 6, the downpour became especially torrential, forcing a portion of...

-Hindustan Times While the Centre has been arguing for a two-lane highway with seven-metre carriageways, some HPC members contended that such a broad width would be dangerous for the fragile Himalayan ecology because it is highly susceptible to Landslides A Supreme Court (SC) bench on Tuesday heard Ravi Chopra, the chairman of the high-powered committee (HPC), which is reviewing the Char Dham highway project in Uttarakhand, and accepted the final report submitted...

-Down to Earth The region, with eight per cent of India’s total geographical area, has 25 per cent of India’s forest cover India’s northeastern region — comprising Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura — is a unique biodiversity hotspot. The region, however, faces many environmental problems. Successive Indian forest surveys in 2015, 2017 and 2019 reported net deforestation of 628, 630 and 765 square kilometres in the region respectively. This...