Little harvest, less land to till

TWO months after a cloudburst and floods destroyed their crops and land, hundreds of farmers in Leh are struggling to make a living. Farmlands in the district of Ladakh are covered with thick layers of dried mud and boulders.

ONGCignores green rules

The  public sector petroleum company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), is giving environmental norms the short shrift while exploring oil and gas reserves in Tripura. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) found this during inspection of abandoned well sites in West Tripura and South Tripura districts in the first week of January.

News 360° - Briefs

hydropolitics Agreement over Nile disputed

Sun, sea and garbage

That's the lot of fishing villages along Karachi's coastline

Green alert in Navi Mumbai

Who will grow food?

Kerala's new Bill protects paddy fields, but farmers find fewer reasons to cultivate rice Faced with severe rice shortage and acute water scarcity, Kerala Assembly on July 24 passed a legislation prohibiting indiscriminate reclamation of paddy fields. The Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Bill, 2007, received the governor's assent in early August and is now being printed for notification.

Travails of a waterscape

SIDDHARTHA KRISHNAN AND PRIYADARSANAN DHARMA RAJAN

Malaysia's bird numbers dwindling

Malaysia will tighten its environmental rules for coastal development projects, after a study showed a significant drop in bird numbers in the country following reclamation.

Concerns over Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project

construction on Gujarat's ambitious Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project in Ahmedabad, restarted in the second week of March, 2007. The project had been stalled since August 2006, when heavy floods inundated the city.

Till the last drop

Half the watershed area of the world's freshwater systems is estimated to have been lost in the twentieth century, as land was converted to agriculture and urban use, or levelled to combat diseases such as malaria. Physical alteration, habitat loss and degradation, water withdrawal, overexploitation, pollution, all contribute to declines in freshwater systems. Amphibians, fish and wetland-dependent birds are high risk in many region of the world.