Tag: Environment

The National River-Linking Project is the world’s most ambitious project of its kind to date, proposing to link 37 major river basins across India using 30 links, potentially redistributing around 174 billion cubic metres of water from ‘surplus’ to ‘deficit’ basins while generating some 34,000 MW of power. Yet the Project has also raised serious...

The National River-Linking Project is the world’s most ambitious project of its kind to date, proposing to link 37 major river basins across India using 30 links, potentially redistributing around 174 billion cubic metres of water from ‘surplus’ to ‘deficit’ basins while generating some 34,000 MW of power. Yet the Project has also raised serious...

The next United Nations climate change conference, COP31, will be held in Antalya in Türkiye in November this year. Türkiye will be hosting the event, with its environment minister Murat Kurum serving as COP31 president. Australia will oversee the negotiations process, with its energy and climate change minister Chris Bowen as the vice-president of COP31....

Nicolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) was a remarkable agricultural scientist in the former USSR. His name is familiar to some as an ‘Indiana Jones’ who roamed around the world collecting crops and seeds, as someone who established the first global seed bank, as a martyr who died in prison despite his extraordinary accomplishments, and as the...

As India expands its clean energy capacity, finding land for solar projects is becoming a challenge. This is driving interest in innovative solar solutions that can generate power without needing more land. The recently approved PM Surya Sarovar Yojana (PM-SSY) is a step in this direction, aiming to develop 5,000 MW of floating solar capacity...

As many as 188 of India’s scientists and ecologists jointly published an appeal to fellow researchers and field practitioners to prepare for the effects of upcoming El Niño — a global weather phenomenon that dampens the monsoon and leads to extreme hot and dry conditions in the subcontinent. In the Pacific Ocean where El Niño...

The Himalaya are approaching a tipping point ​as glaciers melt faster than a decade ago, threatening ‌water security as the region approaches “peak water“ ​by mid-century, according to a study ⁠released this month. The findings come after the collapse of a Himalayan glacier in late August along the Nepal-Tibet border, ‌which caused cascading landslides and...

The synchronous mass flowering and subsequent die-off of bamboo across forest landscapes can trigger a chain of ecological shocks — from invasive weed outbreaks and intense wildfires to rodent population explosions and spikes in human-elephant conflict, a study by Dr. T.V. Sajeev of the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), Peechi, Thrissur, Keralam, has warned. Published...

The wake of the August 26 flash floods in Nepal, which devastated several towns and villages, killed more than a thousand people, and left several more unaccounted for, follows a familiar pattern that emerged after the Chamoli floods, the South Lhonak Lake disaster, and the Thame floods: a call to rethink development in the region...

Ko ​Myeong-hyo loved the vibrant colour and thriving life of South Korea‘s soft corals when she first began diving off the coast of Jeju island six years ‌ago, looking to harvest seafood for sale. “Watching the coral garden collapse and turn white, it was so ​disorienting,” Ko says now, after two years of rising temperatures...