Highlights from the issue

Highlights from the issue

Sunita Narain's Desk: Electric vehicles: Why and How

Illustration: Yogendra Anand/CSE

The goal should be cleaner and lesser vehicles

Cover story: A new buzz

Photographs: Vikas Choudhary / CSE

In several states, farmers now rent honeybees to secure a decent harvest or pick up the brush to hand-pollinate crops. This artificial substitution of pollinators raises new concerns

Column: ‘Know thy pollinators’

A beekeeper collecting honey at a temporary camp in Una district, Himachal Pradesh. Beekeepers travel throughout the year with honey boxes in search of pollen.
A beekeeper collecting honey at a temporary camp in Una district, Himachal Pradesh. Beekeepers travel throughout the year with honey boxes in search of pollen. Photo: Vikas Choudhary /CSE

Our incomplete understanding of Himalayan pollinators is concerning given accelerating environmental changes, global warming, habitat fragmentation and shifting land-use patterns

Data centre: Banking on pollination

More than 87 per cent of flowering plant species rely on pollinators for reproduction and yield

Analysis: Seed saviours

A farmer at a community seed bank in Silpidi village of Dindori district, Madhya Pradesh. Farmers who take seeds from the bank
return double the volume after harvest
A farmer at a community seed bank in Silpidi village of Dindori district, Madhya Pradesh. Farmers who take seeds from the bank return double the volume after harvest Photograph: Vikas Choudhary /CSE

Community seed banks in the country need technical aid, policy support to ensure food security in climate-risked times

Special report: Ominous exemptions

The latest Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention was held at Geneva, Switzerland from April 28 to May 9
The latest Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention was held at Geneva, Switzerland from April 28 to May 9 (Photograph courtesy: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis)

Stockholm Convention sees a worrying trend of nations forcing exemptions on usage of chemicals that face a ban

Factsheet: Clear blip

Photo: iStock

For the first time in five decades, India sees a dip in life expectancy 

Civil Lines: Broken lifeline

Broken lifeline: How COVID-19 halted India’s improving life expectancy in its tracks
Patna's Baansghat Crematorium at the height of the second COVID-19 wave. Photo: Umesh Kumar Ray

COVID-19 knocked India’s rising life expectancy streak

Patently Absurd: India’s CRISPR feat, with borrowed tools

Illustration: Yogendra Anand/CSE

ICAR has developed genome-edited varieties of rice, but has used patented CRISPR technology that will entail huge costs

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