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Weather/Calamities

Series: Combating drought – 3: Traditional methods to the rescue

30th May 2016

India is reeling under a back-to-back drought, with 10 states declared affected and nearly 2,00,000 villages affected, and shredding the social fabric in affected areas. In this concluding part of our series on combating drought, we present examples where traditional methods for water harvesting have been successfully put to use by communities to drought-proof themselves….

Planet suffocation: Earth’s CO2 levels have crossed the tipping point

29th May 2016

Nihar Gokhale writes: 400 parts per million (ppm) refers to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is a level that has for long been considered a limit the world should not cross. On 10 May, an Australian monitoring station became the first in the southern hemisphere to record above 400ppm CO2….

Series: Combating drought – 2: Success stories

23rd May 2016

As India reels under a back-to-back drought, with 10 states declared affected and nearly 2,00,000 villages affected, it’s time to ask whether the present situation could’ve been avoided. And yet, here are examples from across India where, armed with little more than determination and imagination, ordinary people have turned things around to create little oases….

Series: Combating drought – 1: What the experts say

18th May 2016

As India reels under a back-to-back drought, with 10 states declared affected and nearly 2,00,000 villages affected, it’s time to ask whether the present situation could’ve been avoided. As many expert voices presented here point out, it’s not the weather alone that creates a drought, but bad planning and an often corrupt and apathetic administration….

India facing its worst water crisis ever: Himanshu Thakkar

Environmental activist and water expert Himanshu Thakkar tells Business Standard that India needs a comprehensive water use policy immediately. Making it clear that India is facing its worst drought ever, he says: “I do not think it is statement of pessimism but possibly reflects a reality. What we are seeing this year is unprecedented in many respects….

Amita Baviskar: The drought is no longer a natural disaster

10th May 2016

In the past, water scarcity was a constraint that inspired communities to conserve water, devising locally appropriate technologies to share resources. Rajasthan’s baolis and Tamil Nadu’s eris are just two of the many traditional water harvesting systems that survive to this day. However, they have been sidelined by spectacular state projects such as large dams….

Representational pic

Water-rich Agumbe has run dry: and it’s not the only place

7th May 2016

With the drought scorching the world and the rest of India refusing to let up, Agumbe in Shimoga district of Karnataka, known as the ‘Cherrapunji of the the South’ for the abundant rainfall it receives, is experiencing water scarcity this year. In nearby Kerala, perennial rivers like the Pamba and Kabini have gone dry, affecting thousands….

Yogendra Yadav: The season of scorching ironies

6th May 2016

From The Hindu: A petition on a cricket tournament, rather than the plight of the people and its real culprits, has triggered media attention to the drought. Finally, it is the apex court of the country, and not its Parliament, that has found time to pay attention to serious issues of drought relief and mitigation….

Nuno Andre Ferreira

Digest: The manmade forest fires of the Himalayan foothills

4th May 2016

There are almost 400 fires in the Himalayan foothills currently, which have killed five people and finished off at least 19 square kilometres of forest. The timber mafia and ordinary folks are known to illegally set fire in the Himalayan foothills, to fell trees, but its uncontrollable nature this year also points to micro-climatic changes….

Yogendra Yadav: ‘54 crore farmers in the grip of drought’

3rd May 2016

Over 54 crore people across 13 States are in the grip of drought, and it is a multi-dimensional crisis. Highlighting this at a national consultation in Delhi, Yogendra Yadav said that owing to the drought, people were battling for drinking water and food, domestic cattle were dying a nomadic death and farms had turned fallow….

Special: The shocking predicament of the Marathwada farmer, up close

1st May 2016

Marathwada region has seen a rise in farmer suicides due to a combination of shrinking agricultural income and an inability to repay loans. Reported suicides in the eight districts comprising Marathwada jumped by 570 per cent between 2012 and 2015. In this probing multi-part series, Tushar Dhara takes a closer look at the never-ending crisis of Marathwada’s farmers….

Express Study: Fourth Successive ‘Drought’ in 100 Years

30th April 2016

Sunitha Natti reports: A New Indian Express analysis shows we are witnessing four back-to-back droughts for the first time in at least 100 years and are coursing through another as we speak. At least two of them were severe. Analysis of rainfall data across states for the past three decades threw up some startling findings….

Four critical voices on India’s perennial drought problem

29th April 2016

Many parts of India is in the grip of severe drought, some for the third consecutive year, leading to growing hunger, mass migration, water conflicts and farmer suicides. We present four well-known voices – Yogendra Yadav, Jean Dreze, Sunita Narain and the late Anil Agarwal – on India’s perennial drought problem, its causes and possible solutions….

Drought Digest: Dry planet: In every continent, flashing red

27th April 2016

The Indian Express reports: The Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) map shows large patches of dry areas in every continent, indicating droughts of varying severity. The GIDMaPS is a drought monitoring and prediction system that provides near real-time drought information based on multiple drought indicators and input data sets, mostly from NASA….

NEWS UPDATE #91

14th April 2016

Sayantan Bera reports: Data from the ministry of water resources show that in end March, water levels in 91 major reservoirs in the country was at just 25% of capacity—30% lower than last year, and 25% less than the average storage in a decade. The situation is acute in the western parts of the country….

The Hindu

India’s looming water wars can destroy everything, from Make in India to smart cities

8th April 2016

Nikhil Inamdar writes: India has the world’s largest number of people without access to clean water. The financial burden of this has fallen on its poorest agrarian communities, but the crisis is now spilling over to industries too. In Marathwada, the tanker business is the only one booming. The rest of the economy has collapsed….

There’s a drought in many parts of India. Why isn’t it making headlines?

3rd April 2016

Harish Damodaran writes: In the past, droughts invariably fuelled speculation and hoarding by unscrupulous traders. But this time, Indians in the cities are hardly feeling the pinch. Barring sugar, consumers aren’t paying all that much more compared to a year ago. Simply put, this time it is a drought essentially of farmers and rural producers….

NEWS UPDATE #89

31st March 2016

The Centre has proposed modification of green laws to impose a fine up to Rs 20 crore on major environment violators, who would also have to pay a daily fine of Rs 1 crore if the damage continues. Another green law will prevent violators from taking shelter under a legal cover for non-payment of fines….

Some experts have attributed the unprecedented rainfall that led to the 2015 Chennai floods to climate change

The scientific challenge of attributing extreme weather events to human activity

28th March 2016

Roz Pidcock reports: Working out whether human activity is supercharging extreme events like floods, droughts and heatwaves, is one of the youngest branches of climate science. But it’s moving at breakneck pace. So much so, that the US National Academy of Sciences has fast-tracked a report taking stock of the science and where it’s heading….

NEWS UPDATE #87

17th March 2016

The Guardian reports: According to a new NASA study, the average global surface temperature in February was 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month between 1951-1980, a far bigger margin than ever seen before. The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary, to label the new record a “shocker” and warn of a “climate emergency”….