Without urgent global assistance to save the upcoming wheat-planting season in Pakistan, the food security of millions in the flood-hit nation is at risk, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today. Severe flooding, which has affected some 18 million people in Pakistan, has inundated land half the size of Italy and wiped out much of the country’s household wheat seed stocks. Wheat-based flat bread is the main food for...

Catastrophes like unprecedented floods in Pakistan and China and cloudburst in a desert region like Leh in Jammu and Kashmir are no longer rarities. With climate change being a reality, freakish weather-induced calamities are bound to become more frequent all over the world; India being no exception. Mechanisms, therefore, need to be put in place to minimise, if not wholly eliminate, the damage due to such events. Unusual floods in...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

More than a million people settled along the Kosi river in the Indian state of Bihar live an uncertain and nomadic life in "floating villages" because of frequent flooding. Whenever Babuji Sah walks towards his village, Birbar, he says he feels like an ageing camel struggling to find his new address in the sand-filled desert. That is because Birbar is forced to move location every three to four years. The pathways...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes (NREGS), introduced in Sattari taluka in 2008, has started showing positive results. Sattari Taluka Programme Officer Shivdutta Munj has claimed that out of the 254 proposed works, 154 projects were sanctioned and they have completed 100 works under the scheme, while 15 were under execution. “So far, 2,679 job cards have been issued to the locals in Sattari taluka and as many as 2,746 workers have...