On January 1 this year, when everyone was welcoming the new year, residents of Panthar village in Chaubattakhal tehsil (district administration) in Pauri, Uttarakhand were seething with anger. A leopard…
As soon as reports of cracks developing in houses started pouring in from Uttarakhand’s Joshimath town, in early January, the state and central governments swung into action and quickly set…
About four months ago, in September 2022, a state government report confirmed that Joshimath, a town in Uttarakhand, situated at an altitude of 1,875 metres, is sinking. Last week, a…
Rishi Devi, 37, has presently taken shelter in a government school in Joshimath along with her family. As the temperature dips to minus 3.5 degrees Celsius on the cold winter…
A study published last month in The Journal for Nature Conservation reported the presence of plastic and other human-made materials in elephant dung in the forests of Uttarakhand. The study…
Illegal and unscientific sand mining from rivers is generally seen as a threat to the environment, especially aquatic life. But there is another dark side to this that is neither…
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn,” says author Hal Borland. But it seems in 2022, spring forgot its annual appointment with northern India as a usually pleasant…
Sukhpal Singh Tomar, 53, a resident of Lohari village in Uttarakhand and a teacher by profession, narrates the incident that led to the the loss of his home. “It will…
Every time Mahesh, a farmer in Karnataka, interacts with others over a suite of water and soil conservation technologies that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and enhance agricultural yields, the most…
India's northern state of Uttarakhand, known as the Land of Gods, is facing the dual challenge of climate change and migration. The incidence of glacier bursts, flash floods, unseasonal torrential…
The long history of natural disasters in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand has consistently posed questions about the feasibility of new hydropower projects in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region,…
After months of rain between July to September, when dry weather finally began to show up, people in the hill state of Uttarakhand assumed that the monsoon had receded. There…
In an effort to identify plastic accumulation and leakage hotspots along the Ganges river, a recent project in three north Indian cities found that roughly 10–25% of all the plastic…
Whenever it rains heavily, people of Raini village in Uttarakhand spend their nights huddled together in a place safe from the water. Their fear arises from the repeated disasters that…
Sagar Rawat is a resident of Kot village in the hilly district of Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand. He settled in the village after losing his job in an information technology…
Urja Pradesh (power state) has been the slogan for infrastructure development in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, ever since it came into existence in 2000. Over the years, more…
"पहाड़ का पानी और पहाड़ की जवानी पहाड़ में नहीं रुकती " (the water of the mountains and the youth living in the mountains, never stay in mountains). This local…
On a lazy April afternoon, Pallo Devi, 52, sits languidly on a bamboo and jute rope chair outside her home in Haripur Tongia village in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district. Dressed in…
In Uttarakhand, there is a strong drive to displace the nomadic pastoral tribe of Van Gujjars in order to protect wildlife. ‘Van’ means forest. It was an identity conceived by…
“I have never seen this kind of a forest fire before. This year, the fire entered our village, and I could see that it was just 100 meters away from…
