-ThePrint.in From Tamil Nadu to Rajasthan, India has several indigenous water systems that have worked for centuries. As water runs out, we need to return to nature-based solutions. A 13th century stone edict, found inside the Perur Patteeswarar temple near Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, describes the creation of a nearby lake and lays down rules for a water-sharing arrangement between upstream and downstream regions along the Noyyal river. Starting as early as 8th...

-The Hindu The Uttarakhand government continues to ignore evidence that hydropower projects in the fragile region exacerbate disasters In 2018, while travelling through the villages near the India-China border in Niti Valley in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, I stopped at Reni village, the birthplace of the iconic Chipko movement. The way to Reni was dotted with hydropower projects that were marred by controversy. The villagers complained about the rampant flouting of norms by...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org The latest addition to India’s interstate river water conflicts, the Mahanadi will soon go water deficit if Odisha and Chhattisgarh don’t control their hunger for coal-fired power. A new study, Mahanadi: Coal Rich, Water-Stressed sheds light on how both Odisha and Chhattisgarh have locked horns over the distribution of waters of the Mahanadi river. The 851-km-long river originates in the Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh, flows through the state and then...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: An environmental court in Calcutta today directed the Chhattisgarh government to halt work on 31 projects along the Mahanadi river that environmental groups fear will reduce the downstream water flow in Odisha. The Calcutta bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) issued a stay order on the projects, a mix of dams, barrages, irrigation channels among them, at various locations along the Mahanadi before the river enters Odisha's...

-The Hindu Barrier-free tributaries flowing in can mitigate the effect, factoring in high-impact projects A new study has found that dams and other barriers across rivers in the Western Ghats do affect fish species and their recovery downstream. However, barrier-free tributaries that drain in to these rivers can help fish recover even in dammed stretches; protecting such tributaries could be crucial to maintaining fish diversity in the Western Ghats. The Western Ghats is...