-The Business Standard Every year, like clockwork, India is caught between the spectre of months of crippling water shortages and drought and months of devastating floods. In 2014, there has been no respite from this annual cycle. But something new and strange is indeed afoot. Each year, the floods are growing in intensity. Each year, the rain events get more variable and more extreme. Each year, economic damages increase -...
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A year later, no lessons learnt -Kavita Upadhyay
-The Hindu Uttarakhand is still in dire need of a development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem that was crippled by the floods and landslides of 2013 Santosh Naudiyal stood on the verandah of a building in Rudraprayag last December while he narrated his story. On October 1, 1994, the night of the Rampur Tiraha massacre, Santosh and his friends boarded a bus to New Delhi to participate in...
More »High-level solutions-Anil K Gupta
-The Indian Express The Himalayas need special policy attention, given their strategic importance and unique vulnerabilities The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted increased global warming, with a 1.5-2.0 degree rise in surface temperature by the end of the 21st century. This will not only make coastal regions vulnerable to sea-level rise but also make the sensitive Himalayan ecosystem more vulnerable. The increase in temperature will...
More »A year after Uttarakhand floods, disregard for ecology continues -Chetan Chauhan
-The Hindustan Times In the din of elections and euphoria over new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the loss of hundreds of lives in one of the worst Himalayan tragedies in Uttarakhand has been forgotten. The policy correction promised after the tragedy remained mostly on paper and Uttarakhand is back to business as usual - developing but doing little to save the fragile local ecology. The core of the promises made was to check...
More »Agroecological approach for sustenance -Andrea Stone
-The New York Times Small-scale farmers in the developing world, using low-tech sustainable agricultural techniques, may just hold the key to ensuring global food security, writes Andrea Stone The challenge is huge but the solution may be small, very small. Faced with global warming and a population that will swell to 9 billion by 2050, a growing number of experts say that the way to feed the masses as climate change makes...
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