Down To Earth speaks to KR Jaithran, chairman of the Kodungallur municipality, about its new injunction to plant two fruiting trees in the premises of any new building built within the municipality’s jurisdiction after June 5, 2019
‘We need to treat the mountains gently and with respect’
'Warmer future can lead to heavier hailstorms'
'A dung pat is a mini ecosystem'
‘Leave the Sentinelese alone’
50 years after he first visited North Sentinel Island in the Andaman archipelago, veteran anthropologist, T N Pandit talks ...
'There are more than 60,000 tree species in the world & my book had room for only 80!'
Jonathan Drori, author of Around the World in 80 Trees tells S S Jeevan about the phylogeny, ecological services, and the ...
'Thunderstorm is the most challenging segment of weather prediction'
K J Ramesh explains how this season’s thunderstorms is due to a peculiar condition wherein heating in north and ...
Larger spleen helps Indonesia’s Bajau people demonstrate extraordinary diving skills
They are the first humans to have genetically adapted to have larger spleens which help them dive deeper and ...
“Environmental amnesia is constricting our intellect”
Though we are living in a highly degraded environment, we have failed to spot behavioural fallouts. Increasingly, children living ...
‘We have to be optimistic about the survival of Africa’s Pygmy peoples’
Brussels-based Dutchwoman Monique Munting has donned several hats. She has been an academic, independent researcher, consultant and is currently, ...
‘The Persian Gulf is a sensitive issue in Iran’
Amir Masoud Aghababaeian is an Iranian film-maker, originally from Isfahan and based in Tehran. He is the director of ...
"Dialects are the avant-garde teams exploring new semantic possibilities"
Linguist GANESH DEVY has just published a new volume of a unique language survey that is based on geography ...
'Ocean cleaning depends on decisions taken by people across the world'
To combat problems such as ocean acidification and sea level rise, we have to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide
`Bioregionalism could become a global movement'
French architect Didier Prost is an advocate of bioregionalism, which calls for a renewed focus on local people and ...
'Mercury emissions in Asia maybe highest in the world and little data is available'
Data on mercury emissions in Asia is not being recorded, but a new sampling network may change that
‘Plant dyes should be used on an industrial level only if the plants' cultivation is propagated’
Vadodara-based artist Taniya Vaidya recently exhibited her collection of paintings at New Delhi’s India International Centre. She mainly uses ...
`Ancient Indian literature displays exact knowledge of environmental phenomena'
Retired diplomat and well-known translator of ancient Sanskrit texts, Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar recently released the reprint of his ...
“Aboriginal people in Australia still do not have right over their land”
Poet and writer ALI COBBY ECKERMANN was in India recently to launch her memoir, Too Afraid To Cry. The ...
'NGT must have suo motu powers'
Justice Swatanter Kumar has been chairing the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for nearly two years now. In an interview ...
Sinking deltas have not got much attention
River deltas, which have been the seat of most great civilisations in the world, are fast disappearing, says James ...
'Let us internalise the relation we need to have with nature'
Jonathon Porritt wears many hats. A pioneer of green politics in the UK, sustainability campaigner, media personality and writer. ...
Organic goes online
India’s organic food exports have found a new strength—online traceability. Web-based TraceNet can trace an organic product right from ...
‘Let’s understand aquifers to save water’
Global warming, water shortage and a growing population. These are only a few of the problems that Earth faces ...
'Clean environment has to be a fundamental right'
For more than four years now, Narayan Belbase, an environmental public interest lawyer, has been working towards facilitating and ...
India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable
Senior international lawyer Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, who heads the investment programme of the International Institute on Sustainable Development (IISD), has ...