On a sunny February afternoon, Motiram Joshi, 65, is patiently waiting for people to visit his general store in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath town. However, since last year, the tourist inflow has…
“There’s no light or water, but I stay here with my kids. All houses are like this; they are sinking,” says Anita, an agricultural labourer from Joshimath, Uttarakhand, pointing to…
In the Kumaon mountains in the central sector of Uttarakhand's Himalayas, a team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Japan’s Niigata University have unearthed water droplets…
Last week I was in a group travelling in the Himalayas. Starting from the plains of Punjab, we travelled by road to an altitude of above 11,000 feet, to Chitkul,…
A long-term study to understand ways to balance conservation with religious practices, in three tiger reserves of India, has culminated in a set of comprehensive guidelines that provide concrete suggestions…
Sabhalgarh Compartment 8, in the Haridwar forest division is known to the residents as Gaindi Khatta. This is a settlement of the Van Gujjar community, who have been relocated and…
“We had to come to our homes many times in a day from the relief camp we were staying at to take care of our farm and livestock. Now, we…
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…