-The Guardian Rice conservationist Debal Deb grapples with 'mindless Indian elite' to reintroduce genetically diverse, drought-tolerant varieties   Fifty years ago, every Indian village would probably have grown a dozen or more rice varieties that grew nowhere else. Passed down from generation to generation and family to family, there would have been a local variety for every soil and taste - rice that would grow well in Droughts or deep floods, which had...

-The Hindu Business Line The risk of water availability is a painful reality in south Asian agriculture including India. Any deviation from the monsoon causes problems for the farm community and poses threat to food security in the region. The variability in precipitation in India has actually increased in recent years. While comparing the variability of precipitation (given by standard deviation) between two phases, 1950-75 and 1976-2010, in two geographically dispersed districts...

-Down to Earth A Rajasthan village has cylindrical houses that help people cope with extreme weather events It is a chilly December evening in Barmer. The average minimum temperature has dropped to 5° Celsius in this sandy district of western Rajasthan, which borders Pakistan. But thanks to his house, Dayam Khan, a Manganiyar, one of Rajasthan's many communities of traditional musicians, does not need an electric heater or a stove to keep...

-The Hindu Compensation or reparation for damages associated with any country's contribution to historical emissions amounts to a ‘duty to make amends' and is not an act of charity India joined nearly 140 countries in staging a walkout during the recent climate negotiations in Warsaw to oppose the attempt to avoid creating a strong institutional mechanism to address "loss and damage." In the final moments of the conference, however, some form of...

-The Guardian Developing countries threaten to walk out of UN talks in Warsaw over failure to reach agreement on financial recompense The proposal by developing countries that their wealthier counterparts be held financially responsible for the damage incurred by extreme climate events such as typhoon Haiyan and Droughts in Africa has become the most explosive issue at the UN's climate change conference in Warsaw. With neither side prepared to give way on...