-The Indian Express Floods and water-logging show that urban planners have paid scant respect to hydrology Rains have been good this monsoon season so far. But instead of welcoming the bounty, urban India seems to be wallowing in misery. Guwahati is flooded. People in Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai and Hyderabad are beset with water-logged streets and traffic snarls. Even half an hour of rainfall is enough to make a lot of places go...

-The Hindu Wetlands need to be reinforced as more than just open sources of water. How they are identified and conserved requires a rethink The government is all set to change the rules on wetlands. The Draft Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2016, which will replace the Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rules of 2010, seek to give power to the States to decide what they must do with their wetlands. This includes...

-The Hindu Chennai: If only Chennai’s unique macro, medium and micro drainage systems had been effectively maintained, the people of this expanding metropolis would not be undergoing the misery caused by the historic floods. Professor S. Janakarajan of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, who is an expert on water management and disaster risk reduction, agrees that Chennai’s current woes are the result of a “man-made disaster.” According to him, the construction...

-Economic and Political Weekly Chennai floods show the vulnerabilities that arise from the neglect of urban planning. In the second week of November, flood-marooned people in Chennai had an unlikely Good Samaritan. The cab service provider, Ola. As the city struggled to come to terms with its highest rainfall in 10 years, the cab company pressed in boats from an aquatic adventure outfit and secured the services of professional rowers and fishworkers...

-India Today Experts claim that afforestation in the degraded areas include monoculture plantations which is not sufficient to create the ecosystem required for wildlife to thrive. Union environment minister may have a plan to regenerate the degraded forests of the country but that might not revive the lost wildlife and biodiversity because artificial ecosystem cannot be a substitute for the natural process. Forest experts have claimed that massive afforestation in the degraded...