-TheThirdPole.net The plight of a small Himalayan river is echoed all over Asia, as communities lose lives and property to the ‘unscientific and unsustainable’ mining of riverbeds It was around 5 AM on 19 October 2021, dark, drizzling and cold in the foothills of the Himalayas. “A noise woke up my wife,” says farmer Gopal Datt Sharma in Indirapuri village, near the city of Haldwani in Uttarakhand, northern India. She went out...

-Down to Earth The belief that the HPC could protect this fragile ecology has been shattered. I can do no more, Ravi Chopra wrote Environmentalist Ravi Chopra has resigned as chairman and member of the High Powered Committee (HPC) for the Char Dham Project, citing an assault on the Himalayas in an explosive letter. Chopra was offered the chairmanship of the HPC in September 2019. He mentioned what compelled him to take it...

-TheThirdPole.net A new study suggests that Himalayan glaciers may be melting even during winter, when they were previously believed to remain stable In late winter 2020, glaciologist Sudip Thakuri visited Kalinchowk, a peak in the Himalayas around 144 km west of Kathmandu. He was surprised by what he saw. The destination, popular among Kathmandu residents seeking a sight of snow-covered mountains, wasn’t as thickly blanketed in white as in previous years. Later...

-IDROnline.org Natural resource management activities under NREGA have the potential to help India increase carbon sequestration and combat climate change. The world’s largest anti-poverty programme may also help India achieve its target of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent, through additional forest and tree cover, by 2030, in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) captured 102...

-Down to Earth Lack of planning, introduction of hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers, insecticides and weed killers are responsible for decline in pulses’ cultivation Pulses have an important place in our culture. But with imports increasing every day, they are getting too expensive for the poor. As a result, malnutrition is increasing. It is not that farmers do not grow pulses here due to lack of seeds and knowledge, but there is a lack...