-Down to Earth Attacks by desert locusts are threatening India, Iran and Pakistan, as well as the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region Desert locusts are breeding 400 times than usual due to favourable climatic conditions, according to a report by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). This explosive multiplication may spell disaster for large parts of Asia and Africa. Favourable climatic conditions for the pests have resulted in their multiplication,...

-Down to Earth Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic pushes government to act on reforms of food systems with urgency Food systems must be inclusive, local and diverse to address food security and malnutrition and build economic and climate resilience, according to the latest 2020 Global Nutrition Report. The report — released by the Stakeholder group — placed equity as the cornerstone of all efforts to overcome global malnutrition and insisted on policy...

-TheThirdPole.net Fisheries markets collapsed in the first days of the lockdown, impoverishing hundreds of thousands of small fishers, and recovery is nowhere in sight When Pradip Chatterjee, president of Dakshinbanga Matsyajibi Forum (South Bengal Fishers’ Forum – DMF), starts talking about the problems that plague small scale fishers in West Bengal, there is no stopping him. He finds a multitude of issues that confront them, from climate change to Covid-19. DMF is...

-Livemint.com The line, connecting Hubballi and Ankola, poses a risk to 2,500 endemic species. On March 20, the controversial Hubballi-Ankola railway line project was cleared at the Karnataka State Wildlife Board meeting in Bengaluru amid protests from members. The proposed 164.44-km line will pass through the Western Ghats, a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site, and see felling of 2.2 lakh trees, a move that has been opposed...

-Newsclick.in Release of the draft during a lockdown, which seeks to fundamentally changes India’s environmental regulations, shows BJP government’s utter disdain for public opinion. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and climate change (MoEFCC) had released a Draft Notification on Environment Impact Assessment 2020 (EIA Notification 2020) on March 12, 2020, on the eve of the world’s largest nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had called for responses in the next...