-The Pioneer Centre must come up with a national policy The Supreme Court’s intervention for the lack of a national policy to help calamity-hit farmers is welcome. Regardless of what we have at the moment for them, the country's bread-earners must be offered all possible support to strengthen the economy. While taking up a number of public interest litigations, the apex court found that the Government had no policy to tackle the...

-The Hindu One of the first things to get affected during Natural disasters and accidents is the communication network. In a country where over a billion use mobile phones, providing mobile connectivity during a disaster, at least for emergency usage, is a priority. In this context, an IIT Madras team is developing a low-cost communication system that can enable rescue workers to communicate with a locally established centre and, through this centre,...

-The Hindu Biodiversity integration into developmental plans is crucial for sustainable development In a ‘Mann Ki Baat’ broadcast recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his environmental concerns clear when he asked people to use Ganesha and Durga idols made of clay instead of plaster of Paris. His appeal is bound to stimulate our environmental consciousness and encourage the preservation of precious natural resources. We need to build on this appeal and follow...

-The Hindu People migrating due to environmental disasters should be accorded ‘refugee’ status in international law An increasing number of people globally are facing displacement due to droughts, famines, rising sea levels and other Natural disasters caused by climate change. This class of migrants has been labelled as ‘environmental refugees’ in popular literature. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international body reviewing trends of internal displacement, an estimated 24 million...

-Livemint.com A World Bank report cautions that the urban poor will bear the brunt of losses if cities don’t become more resilient to Natural disasters, shocks, and stresses New Delhi: By 2030, without significant investment into making cities more resilient, climate change may push up to 77 million more urban residents into poverty, said a new report released by the World Bank on Wednesday. The report ‘Investing in Urban Resilience’ by the World...