-Village Square High levels of arsenic in the water supply is afflicting many villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh but the government hasn’t been able to design and implement any program to contain the menace Ballia (Uttar Pradesh): Ekawana Rajpur is a village in Belhari administrative block along the banks of the Ganga and 16km from Ballia town in eastern Uttar Pradesh where villagers commonly suffer from afflictions such as itchy skin lesions,...

-The Economic Times BENGALURU: The state pollution authority has warned action against industrial units in Peenya after a four-year study by scientists traced the source of contamination in the Vrishabhavathi river to the effluents discharged by them. The contamination is also getting into the food chain as the water containing heavy metals is used by farmers to grow vegetables, notably baby corn. Scientists from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the...

-The Times of India Kolkata: Despite intervention by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), arsenic levels in water have gone up significantly in the Gaighata Block of North 24-Parganas, about 60 km from Kolkata, a report by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) has revealed. In some cases, arsenic levels have gone up by up to 200%, the report states. Arsenic contamination in the Gaighata-Teghoria belt was first reported by The Times...

-The Hindu People migrating due to environmental disasters should be accorded ‘refugee’ status in international law An increasing number of people globally are facing displacement due to droughts, famines, rising sea levels and other natural disasters caused by climate change. This class of migrants has been labelled as ‘environmental refugees’ in popular literature. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international body reviewing trends of internal displacement, an estimated 24 million...

-Livemint.com Healthy, living soil is the most essential element in ensuring food security. Yet it is often ignored by policy planners The global population, which stood at 6.1 billion in 2000, is estimated to reach 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. India has 2.4% of the world’s arable land and more than 17% of the global population. Meeting the demand for fibre and food to feed this growing population...