As the Second World War ended in the mid-1940s, an important scientific breakthrough was to add a strong weapon to the global fight against malaria. The industrial synthesis of chloroquine,…
The neem tree in Kumarettiyapuram village in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu was a media attraction in early 2018. Villagers would gather here every day in protest against pollution from…
The World Environment Day on June 5 marks the formal launch of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a decade where efforts to massively scale up the restoration…
Institutionalised conservation efforts in India started with the enactment of the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972 and the launch of the Project Tiger - to conserve the apex predator and…
In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, I was working with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in its global headquarters at…
Investment in infrastructure is the most important focus area in the Union Budget 2021-2022 unveiled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, and it is for this reason that…
In 1949, George Orwell published his dystopian view of what the world would be in 1984 in his novel by the same name. For India, 1984 was a disturbing year,…
The word ‘hill forest’ often brings up an imagery of a tall cliff draped in dense greenery, rising from the plains, peaking high to vanish amidst the mist. Though that…
When Malayalam’s celebrated poet Sugathakumari, a pioneer of environmental activism in Kerala, reached the state’s tribal heartland Attappadi during the early months of 1980, the region looked like a barren…
The first case of COVID-19 infection was officially reported in India in January 2020 from Thrissur in Kerala. In December 2020, a 90-year-old Britisher became the world’s first person to…
The earliest record of grass and scrub jungle in south Tamil Nadu comes from the Sangam literature which termed them as Mullai and the drier parts as Paalai lands. In…
Pusa Decomposer, a microbial spray, developed by the Microbiology Division of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI), Delhi, is the harbinger of hope for an end to paddy residue burning…
The mountainous Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu is now witnessing an ecosystem collapse mainly due to extreme weather events. Floods that are happening almost every year are causing major landslides…
In 1991, the year when India launched its economic reforms, I travelled to the Narmada valley. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) – the anti-Sardar Sarovar dam movement – had organised…
After over three decades of research, an Indian variety of coloured cotton may be commercially released by 2021. A decision will be taken once the last phase of the agronomy…
The President of United Nations General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, is convening the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity on September 30, 2020. This is being held on the margins of the…
According to legend, King Solomon had a brief encounter with a “valley of ants” and his admiration for them led him to value all life forms. The resilience of ants…
In the past few weeks, four districts of eastern Vidarbha region in Maharasthra flooded. This is a region with four major rivers, dozen-odd dams, almost 50 percent river basin area…
Some 126 years after British police officer Fred Fawcett’s chance discovery of the famous Edakkal Caves and their ancient rock carvings in Wayanad district of Kerala, the mountain which houses…
Global biodiversity is in steep decline, the WWF has warned in its flagship Living Planet Report 2020. The numbers of mammals, birds, fish, plants and insects have fallen an average…
