-The Times of India Ajab (Junagadh): Forty-year-old farmer Mahesh Ratanpara, a resident of Ajab village, 45km from Junagadh town, has decided to switch to organic farming. In fact, this year he has not used a drop of chemical-based pesticide in his 22-bigha farm. He is not the only one to have decided to switch to organic farming. At least 102 other farmers from the village with population of over 9,000, have decided...

-Livemint.com The year that is drawing to a close was dotted by extreme weather events, posing new challenges for weather forecasting New Delhi: Unseasonal rains and crop Damage in several states, followed by deficit rainfall and drought in nine states, topped off by a deluge in Chennai at the end of 2015. The year that is drawing to a close was dotted by extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent. Several...

-The Telegraph Paris: Rich nations led by the US have ensured that a key UN-mediated loss-and-Damage mechanism to counter the effects of global warming would lose its teeth in the climate-change agreement expected to emerge here next week. The draft agreement, released today, has the words "compensation" and "liability" deleted from the text, nixing the possibility of holding the developed nations accountable for climate change-triggered disasters and forcing them to pay Damages. The...

-The Hindu Business Line A CAG audit shows that the Centre and State governments have been criminally remiss over disaster management The unprecedented and continuing rains that have broken a 100-year record and have wreaked havoc in Chennai for over a week, highlight both elaborate rescue and relief efforts as well as gaps in the existing policy on disaster planning. It is true that swift deployment of the armed forces to evacuate...

-IANS Bhubaneswar: After its two-day review of the drought situation in Odisha, a central team on Saturday admitted that the situation in the state is gloomy with over 80 percent crop loss in many areas. "Extensive Damage of crops, especially paddy, has taken place in many areas. We have seen that while there was no sowing in some areas, some places have no grain. The farmers need compensation to sustain their livelihood,"...