India's finance minister has announced two major programmes for mangrove plantation and wetlands conservation in the country's latest annual budget, drawing a mixed response among the conservation academics who welcomed…
To find solutions to energy security challenges, by diversifying the energy basket, scientists are turning to natural materials. The International Energy Agency (IEA) defines energy security as the ‘uninterrupted availability…
‘Ozhippom Thupakkiyai, Kaapom Yanaigalai’ carried the right punch to trigger off a gun surrender drive in Hosur forest division of Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu. Translated into English, the message was clear –…
Atpadi, a taluka (administrative division) in the Sangli district of southern Maharashtra, covers approximately 60 villages with a population of over 1.5 lakh (150,000). It falls on the upper reaches…
An MBA graduate, an engineer, and a Self-Help Group (SHG) member – that's the diversity of entrepreneurs taking up cage aquaculture in Odisha under the state’s Reservoir Fishery Policy. The…
After marathon negotiations and a clutch of protests, including a “die-in” by global youth and a walk-out by developing countries over a funding stalemate, nearly 200 nations struck a historic…
As Indian cities expand, concerns about their rising food demand and the accompanying pressure on the agriculture sector cannot be ignored. Indian agriculture is already under scrutiny for being one…
Few terms are more paradoxically promising to a scientist than ‘open data’. ‘Funding approved’ is better, but that’s not the subject of this review. Open data promises ‘data’, the cornerstone…
It’s dawn on a summer day in Sanwata village in the desert state of Rajasthan. Even at this early hour, there are concerns about the rising heat. The desert too,…
The Longwood Shola, the last and the only urban shola forest in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu was recently granted the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy (QCC) accreditation, a forest conservation…
Dinesh Gole is an artisan working from Pen, a small town, around 110 kilometres away from Pune in Maharashtra, where he makes idols of the Hindu god Ganesha. These idols…
A 700 to 800 metres stretch of mangroves to the west of Pakhiraloy ferry ghat on an island in the Indian Sundarbans, part of a plantation project in 2020, was…
Kalpana Sethi, 30, exuberantly shows around her two-acre land, which was once a wasteland but now aids in her children’s education. Situated on a moderate slope, in the Bisoi village…
A model for an effective melange of mangrove conservation and development has emerged in a new study along the coast of the western state of Gujarat in India, which offers…
Almost like in an advertisement for a sanitary napkin company, Chandramani Devi of Bihar’s Sitamarhi district said she felt ‘liberated’ after using cloth pads during her menstrual cycle. “It’s a…
Narayan Gaikwad, 74, never thought he would have to rethink farming — an occupation he has been practicing for over six decades. But, the rise in the price of chemical…
About three years ago, the silence of a quiet evening was broken for Dinesh Das as an adult male wild elephant entered the courtyard of his tin-roofed house in Rani,…
Indian savannahs, often tagged as ‘degraded forests’ in the afforestation framework, are likely to throw up “tons of new plant species,” say Indian scientists in a new study. Scouring through…
In the mountainous district of Wayanad in Kerala, the Meenangadi grama panchayat has launched a process for turning their area carbon neutral. The measures, planned and implemented by the local…
Baby mangroves with leathery leaves peep out through lush meadows of grass that greet the Bay of Bengal. Soon enough these densely clumped blades and tufts of salt-tolerant grasses, in…