-The Indian Express The Himalayas need special policy attention, given their strategic importance and unique vulnerabilities The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted increased global warming, with a 1.5-2.0 degree rise in surface temperature by the end of the 21st century. This will not only make coastal regions vulnerable to sea-level rise but also make the sensitive Himalayan ecosystem more vulnerable. The increase in temperature will...
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A year later, no lessons learnt -Kavita Upadhyay
-The Hindu Uttarakhand is still in dire need of a development plan that is also sensitive to the fragile ecosystem that was crippled by the floods and landslides of 2013 Santosh Naudiyal stood on the verandah of a building in Rudraprayag last December while he narrated his story. On October 1, 1994, the night of the Rampur Tiraha massacre, Santosh and his friends boarded a bus to New Delhi to participate in...
More »From displacement to disappearance-Farah Naqvi
-The Hindu Camp after camp has been forced to disappear in Muzaffarnagar by the official authorities. The people displaced by the communal riots are now in small shanty settlements, 10 tents here, another 10 tents half a kilometre down the road On December 26, 2013, a large group of visitors entered the Loi relief camp in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh. Loi camp - a festering sea of displaced and despairing humanity, with...
More »A Tough Gangtok Rap -Soumik Dutta
-Outlook An RTI exposes how the Sikkim govt has blatantly misutilised funds meant for quake relief Whose Money Is It Anyway! Of the Rs 60.45 crore allocated for construction of roads and bridges, the state government gave only Rs 30 crore Another Rs 52.64 crore was allocated, of which the government again spent only Rs 3 crore On the other hand, the...
More »Down a slippery slope in Uttarakhand-Bishnu Prasad Das
-The Hindu The devastating landslips were caused by the undercutting of fragile hillsides for highways rather than by dams, which actually helped mitigate the floods The natural calamity of June 16 through 19 that devastated the whole of Uttarakhand and large areas of Himachal Pradesh and western Uttar Pradesh - an area of almost 20,000 sq.km. - was one of extremely rare severity among all the hydro-meteorological disasters to have struck India. Intense...
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