Pesticides

This report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) deals with the results of the performance audit of water pollution in India for the year ended March 2011. The issue was examined by CAG because various stakeholders working in the field of environment flagged water pollution as the most important environmental issue that concerns us. 

The audit was conducted through document analysis, collection of responses to questionnaires, physical collection and testing of samples. The results of audit, both at the Central level and the State level, were taken into account for arriving at audit conclusions.

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This report by International Water Management Institute deals with the hydrology of the Upper Ganga river - the upper main branch of the river. To provide the background hydrological information for the assessment of environmental flow requirements at four selected ‘Environmental Flow’ sites, a hydrological model was set up to simulate the catchment in the present state (with water regulation  infrastructure) and to generate the natural flows (without water regulation infrastructure).

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This policy document by the Department of Environment, Government of Kerala highlights the need for conservation of natural resources in the state of Kerala, in the context of increasing exploitation of resources and deterioration of the environment in the state.Read More

The policy aims at mainstreaming environmental concerns in all the developmental activities and  argues that the most secure basis for conservation is to ensure that people dependent on resources obtain better livelihoods from conservation, rather than degradation of resources.

This set of presentations from the conference on Outstanding Organic Agriculture Techniques held during September 2009 at Bangalore deals with pest and disease management practices in organic farming, which rely primarily on preventive and integrated methods.

Crop production and plan protection in organic farming

This paper by S R Sundararaman presents organic farming as the only recourse for farmers, to save both livelihood and the health of the soil. Organic farming methods enable farmers save money and turn their farmyard waste into value-added products for increasing crop production. Farmers will not have to be dependent on agri-business companies for seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. Our self-reliance is thus preserved. A large portion of our country's foreign exchange is used to pay for the import of petroleum products. By going organic we will also help our country save on valuable foreign exchange. Our land will keep giving us returns for extended periods of time unlike farming as per the green revolution, where the land stays productive for a short time and then becomes sterile.

The uppermost question in the minds of farmers who have recently converted to organic farming or who want to turn organic is how to ensure that crop production does not reduce and how to protect the plants from disease, without the chemical fertilizers and pesticides that their fields have grown used to. This paper provides the answers and it also seeks to reassure all farmers that there is no farm which cannot turn around and produce quality crops in sufficient quantity, using organic farming methods.Read More