-Down to Earth Tanks have fallen into disrepair for lack of a clear community ownership; but farmers, mostly women, are now being paid for its upkeep There is a reason why tanks — water bodies that store rainwater for irrigation — are in abundance in Karnataka. The state does not have many rivers; nor does it receive a lot of rainfall.    Karnataka’s Kolar district is dotted by these tanks, which have assumed...

-Down to Earth blog The ecology of Himachal Pradesh’s hydropower hub is too fragile for such projects “Twenty-five years ago, people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much about climate change. Today, we have no excuses,” Desmond Tutu, South African theologian, had said. The recent landslides in Himachal Pradesh's Kinnaur district brought back focus on how 40 per cent of the state is geologically ‘highly sensitive’, according to a report...

-Down to Earth More than half of the degraded land in the country is either rainfed farmland, responsible for the food security of the country, or forest land that offers the best defenc With close to 30 per cent of its geographical area already affected, land degradation is definitely among India’s most pressing environmental problems. To make matters worse, almost all Indian states have recorded an increase in degraded land in the...

-Down to Earth Incentivising farmers to sell solar power as a remunerative crop can help reduce the usage of diesel pumps The irrigation-energy nexus in India's agriculture sector is characterised primarily by depleting groundwater and a growing debt burden of power distribution companies (DISCOM). This is due to massive power subsidies that remain underfunded by the states.   The Government of India (GoI) has been promoting solar irrigation pumps by offering substantial investment...

-Down to Earth Water shocks affect not only the number of people who move but also the skills they bring with them Rainfall variability is expected to be one of the contributing forces in migration, according to a new World Bank report released 23 August, 2021.  Rainfall deficit is linked to approximately 10 per cent of the increase in global migration between 1970 and 2000, the report said.  Water shocks affect not only the...