Health

Southwest monsoon claims 227 lives

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi based non-profit has rated the country’s fertilizer sector on several parameters, in a first of its kind study. The rating, done over an 18-month-long process, covered 28 of the 32 functional fertilizer units in the country. The findings of this green rating project were shared during the release of this rating report on 29th July, 2019 in New Delhi.

Himalayan states demand green bonus and separate ministry from Centre

Chikkaballapur is a district in the state of Karnataka, just north of the capital Bengaluru. A peri-urban area that was once an agricultural centre for this region, today Chikkaballapur is facing a unique problem. 

Decreasing rainfall has meant increasing periods of drought for this area, which in turn has caused residents to dig deeper and deeper in search of water. In this pursuit for groundwater, they have found water… but it is contaminated with fluoride.

Crop production is highly influenced by the sensitivity of crops to variations in climate and can have major implications for food supply and rural livelihoods. The effects of climate change are increasing in India, where extreme rainfall events have become more frequent and spatially more variable. On the other hand, there has also been an increase in the severity and frequency of droughts.

The water sector remains male dominated at different scales, from engineers and technocrats responsible for designing irrigation systems, to upper caste and upper class men who decide on the location of canals, borewells, tanks, and other water systems at the grassroots level. While women are involved in the daily management of water for food production, especially on small farms, they have little say in water provisioning decisions.

The threat of desertification increases in 26 of 29 states

Urban India needs to take air pollution more seriously than it does now. The Centre for Science and Environment’s report, State of India's Environment 2019 has come up with startling facts on the state of air in the country. “Air pollution is responsible for 12.5 percent of all deaths in India. Its impact on children is equally worrying. Over 100,000 children below the age of five die due to bad air in the country.”

India's food system produces large environmental impacts but these vary by diets. The per capita environmental impacts of diets in India are currently lower than those of many high-income countries due, in part, to habitually low consumption of animal source foods. But, this relatively low per capita impact may change due to the “nutrition transition” from cereal-dominated diets towards diets high in animal-source and highly processed foods, at least among some segments of the population.