Environment

Top 10 stories of the week that was (October 14-20)

Down To Earth recaps the primary environment, health and developmental news from the week just gone by

DTE Staff

Here are Down To Earth’s top 10 green stories on the week that was:

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on October 13, 2023 notified the ‘green credit’ programme, a first-of-a-kind market-based instrument designed to incentivise individuals, industries and local bodies for their voluntary environmental actions across diverse sectors. 

Tropical crops like coffee, cocoa, watermelon and mango, face a potential crisis due to the loss of insect pollinators, according to a new study led by researchers from the University College London and the Natural History Museum.

A mounting global water crisis threatens $58 trillion in economic value, food security and sustainability, according a new report. 

Hospitalised patients with COVID-19 experience a variety of illnesses after discharge that may persist until 12 months post-discharge, a new study that followed up with former COVID-19 patients part of the Indian National Clinical Registry for COVID-19 during three waves of the pandemic found.

Scientists have proposed a new evolutionary law that can explain the evolution of living and non-living entities, from minerals to stars. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The number of wildfires in the Amazon forests in the first half of 2023 was 10 per cent higher than in 2022, according to researchers from the University of East Anglia and the University of South Alabama. 

The hopes of a section of India’s population were dashed on October 17, 2023 as the Supreme Court refused to grant legal recognition to same-sex marriages in the country.

Lao People’s Democratic Republic has eliminated lymphatic filariasis (LF), a disease that cripples and has significant social and economic impact on the affected communities according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Kerala is expected to experience moderate to heavy rain along with thunder, lightning and flooding over the course of the upcoming week, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The southwest monsoon, which usually ends by the end of September, is still in effect, making the state appear extremely unstable.

Increasing human land use, combined with the impacts of climate change, has altered lion behaviour in Africa, according to a new study.