-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,...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Human-triggered fatal Landslides are becoming frequent in the Himalayas and Western Ghats -Manu Moudgil
-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...
More »SC resolves Char Dham road width issue; order awaited - Jayashree Nandi
-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...
More »Kerala Landslide death toll climbs to 49, NDRF teams resume rescue work
-Hindustan Times On Sunday too, rains lashed many parts of Kerala amid weather forecasts of extremely heavy rainfall in six districts. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a red alert for extremely heavy rainfall in Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Alappuzha districts. The death toll in the Landslide at a tea estate in Rajamalai in Idukki district of Kerala rose to 49 on Monday after six more bodies were recovered,...
More »Draft EIA 2020: How it may impact North East -Sayan Banerjee
-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...
More »