CATEGORIES

Burning Dark

From the Arctic to the Amazon, fires are raging at an unprecedented scale, stoking an unfathomable fear: is the planet staring at an irreversible meltdown?

Value Of Soil

The benefits of action against land degradation through sustainable management are seven times higher than its cost in 15 years

Think How To Sink

The best way to remove carbon is by sequestering it in its natural sinks

How To Create An Oasis

Neither a short-term solution nor a one-size-fits-all approach will help fight desertification. Governments tend to commit this mistake, but communities across the world are building on their traditional experiences to achieve land degradation neutrality

The Dictum On Desertification

LAND IS AT THE CORE OF FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Taming The Thar

What it takes to reclaim the world’s most populated desert

Silent Spread

More than 100 countries are at the risk of desertification. Left unchecked, this could fuel conflicts and displace 700 million people worldwide by 2050

Picture Imperfect

It’s difficult to ignore how desertification is expanding in areas that are on the front line of climate change

Quash The Dogma

Most policies to tackle desertification are bound to fail. The problem will get solved as soon as they become holistic

It Is Everybody's Business

Private sector is vital to restore land and sustain life

A Quarter Under Desertification

What does this mean for India where more than 60 per cent of the population depends on agriculture?

Trouble For Tomato

Country's biggest tomato producing district surrenders to cheap Chinese pulp

Ask No Questions!

The amendment to the RTI Act will hit grassroots activism

The Curious Mind

The urge to look towards the sky stems from an intrinsic human curiosity emanating out of not just scientific but also existential queries

Cyclone Fani - New Gust Of Wind

Cyclone Fani hits Odisha, bringing back horrid memories of the 1999 super cyclone. The state is better prepared now. But a changing climate the chemistry of cyclones as changed. This poses a bigger threat.

For a Good Night's Sleep

Most urban Indians dread bedtime. Sleep disorders ensure that 93 per cent of the people living in cities don't sleep well or worse, are not able to sleep at all. This sleeplessness results in diseases, which can cost their health and the country's economy dearly. What is causing us to lose sleep? And how can we sleep well again? VIBHA VARSHNEY and KARNIKA BAHUGUNA make sense of latest research.

Mortal Combat

Can life be extended indefinitely? There is a renewed vigour among scientists looking for ways and means to cheat death.

Nowhere To Flow

Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from over-exploitation

Time To Talk

Gap in communication between India and neighbouring Nepal is an endemic problem that worsens Bihar floods

Champaran Satyagraha Continues

A century ago, Mahatma Gandhi tested the idea of satyagraha for the first time to fight for indigo farmers in Champaran. While the crop is seeing a revival in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Champaran in Bihar is in the throes of another peasant struggle.

Commons No More

Odisha government is setting up land banks to lure industries and investments. In the rush, it is alienating people from the commons. ISHAN KUKRETI travels to some of the areas worst hit by the government-sponsored land grab.

Rise After The Fall​​​​​​​

Sikkim, once the world's largest producer of large cardamom, is trying to regain its lost glory. Can it achieve the feat in the face of a changing climate?

Save The Cow Mother

Oxytocin is given to women during and after childbirth to save their lives from blood loss. But the government is planning to restrict its use as it is illegally given to cattle to increase milk production.

Deluge Of The Century

Kerala's worst flood since 1924 reinforces how local environmental degradation and lack of disaster preparedness can make extreme weather events deadly.

Where India Fears To Tread

Even rich nations are using compulsory .licences to ensure cheaper life-saving drugs for public healthcare unlike India.

Bizarre, Serious, Jocular

Janaki Lenin captures the animal (and human) world in all its mystique and charm.

Plan B For The Planet

The world cannot afford a 2o C rise. The climate change goal must be fixed at 1.5o C so that we get a chance to avert the worst impacts

Lessons From Beijing

In just four years, Beijing has improved its air quality by setting time-bound targets and implementing a comprehensive regional action plan

Drive The Extra Mile

India is not only directly moving from BSIV to BSVI, it is also not allowing vehicle manufacturers extra time to sell the stock of unsold BSIV vehicles

Listen... Plants Too Speak

As early as in 1880, Charles Darwin demonstrated that plants could sense light, moisture, gravity, pressure and possessed several other qualities. Over the years, many scientists have proved that plants are sentient beings and move and respond to sensation. The subject is still controversial among the scientific community. Monica Gagliano is research associate professor of evolutionary ecology and former fellow of the Australian Research Council who has pioneered a brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics. In her latest book, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants, she, for the first time, has experimentally demonstrated that plants emit their own ªvoicesº and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. In these excerpts, Gagliano writes about how the pea plant responds to acoustic vibrations to locate water