Cover story: Fading reefs
Warm-water corals are the first major ecosystem to collapse in a rapidly warming planet
Cover story: Battle for reefs
A volunteer of Soneva Conservation & Sustainability, Maldives fixes transplanted reefs in an underwater nursery off Kunfunadhoo islands, Maldives. Since launching in 2022, the initiative has built a one-hectare nursery and transplanted 31,000 corals. Scientists are helping corals fight back against warming seas
Interview: ‘Reefs as we have known them will not survive anywhere’
IPBES chair David Obura warns of the alarming consequences of the ongoing mass coral bleaching event
Special report: Fatal neglect
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation has confirmed that deaths of children in Madhya Pradesh are linked to specific batches of three cough syrups which contained diethylene glycol, a toxic industrial solvent A spate of child deaths from contaminated cough syrup exposes deep flaws in India’s drug oversight
Special report: In unsettled state
Phali-laga Sagantola village in Chamoli district has faced subsidence due to riverbank erosion and heavy rain on September 17-18. Since then, the village has been declared unsafe and all the houses lie vacantBattered by disasters, land-scarce Uttarakhand must relocate villages deemed unsafe. Forestland is the only available option, but the state faces resistance from forest department
Special report: Flushed and forgotten
As many as 18 out of 55 faecal sludge treatment and co-treatment plants in Uttar Pradesh are operating at 20 per cent of their capacity. One of the reasons for this is the illegal dumping of faecal sludge by privately run vacuum trucks in open fields instead of going to the plantsPoor containment systems, weak monitoring and illegal dumping have turned Uttar Pradesh’s faecal sludge handling into an environmental ticking bomb
Special report: Conservation, digitally
A small seasonal pond in Vaskote village in Tumkur district of Karnataka, was desilted and expanded using a mobile application, CLART. The revived pond now benefits nearly 400 households, including 50-year-old Geetamma, who now grows two crops annuallyKarnataka’s Jala Sanjeevini programme shows how technology and community labour can help revive parched landscape
Civil Lines: Let soil live
IUCN's Motion 007 seeks to explore options for international legally binding and non-binding instruments on soil security
Patently Absurd: How to slash a drug price by 97 per cent
Rulings that bar patent extensions on flimsy grounds by drug giants are opening the gates to dramatically cheaper generic medicines
Initiative: Back to the roots
Having relied on market produce for most of her life, Poona Yadav, like many women in Barkheda village, Madhya Pradesh, has had to learn from elders how to cook forest foods. She now says they are far more nutritiousOver 200 tribal villages in Madhya Pradesh are turning to forests to restore food security, breaking free from years of market dependence
Review: The life of water
A screenshot from “The Eternal Swamp”. The short films carry illustration by Sarnath Banerjee that make the narrative compellingThree-part film series Water Wars looks at access and availability of water in india through a socio-economic prism, highlighting the natural resource’s integral link to agriculture, health and politics
Sunita Narain's Desk: To do or not to do
There is a collision of ideas and actions in the world and the make-or- break question is which one will prevail