-PTI India will restore 50 lakh hectare of its degraded land by 2030, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday. Speaking ahead of the upcoming global conference on land desertification, the minister said 29 per cent land of India’s total geographical area is degraded which has to be restored and will be the agenda of the the summit. India is hosting the Conference of Parties (COP) 14 of the United...

-Hindustan Times The CPCB itself has been given a month’s time to publish the guidelines for restoration water bodies, not presently protected by any national legislation which protects water bodies more than 2.5 acres in size. Gurugram: The National Green Tribunal (NGT), last week, instructed all states and Union territories to follow Haryana’s example and create detailed inventories of water bodies not already protected by any law, review their existing framework...

-Hindustan Times Whether it is to manage the flood situation of Yamuna or water logging of Kuttanad, we should adopt a similar strategy and promote the “give water its space” concept. Forcing water bodies to give up their space or change their courses, as envisaged in the country-wide river interlinking project will lead to irreversible consequences, learning from the examples before us. The monsoon is an unsettling time in India, with...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...

-PTI Ahmedabad: Torrential rains pounded parts of Gujarat today, leading to a deluge-like situation at several places, even as the state’s disaster management authority has been put on alert to tackle any emergency situation. Tankara gauged a massive 280 mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours. Teams of the disaster management department with the help of National Disaster Response Force personnel rescued around 14 people stranded in floodwaters in the district. “Tankara...