Desertification is perhaps not as widely publicised an environmental issue as others, but this does not take away from the severity of the threat it poses – that of a fundamental threat to our way of life. India is beset by a plethora of environmental issues – desertification looms among them. As defined in a […]
drought
Water availability on the decline: World Water Day 2020
India is home to around eighteen percent of the global population — with numbers set to increase in the coming years. Despite such a vast population, India only has access to around four percent of global freshwater resources. Meanwhile, India’s per capita water availability is on the decline, presenting the very real possibility of a […]
Droughts linked to bone disease in India
Droughts have an obvious immediate impact on both rural and urban areas. However, the rise in use of contaminated drinking water resulting from lack of available clean water sources is giving rise to diseases such as fluorosis. According to one monitoring platform, approximately 42 percent of the total land in India is prone to […]
Child health: How climate change will affect it
“A child born today will experience a world that is more than four degrees warmer than the pre-industrial average, with climate change impacting human health from infancy and adolescence to adulthood and old age,” reads a report published yesterday by The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change – lending a chilling insight into the […]
Heavy flooding continues to ravage India
Amidst the heavy flooding plaguing eastern and northern India, a tiger displaced from Assam’s flood-ravaged Kaziranga National Park sought refuge in a nearby house – much to the shock of residents. The tiger fled the park where 92 animals have drowned. Many are still trapped by the floodwaters. In a viral photo shared by an […]
The death toll of India’s heatwave
India is currently in the midst of a heatwave that has seen temperatures exceed 45°C in some parts of the country. Officials have cited reports of 207 heat-related deaths across the country at the time of writing. This death toll includes 83 people in the eastern state of Bihar, although some estimates place the […]
Water crisis: Day Zero arrives in Chennai
India has been staring down the barrel of a water crisis for some time now. In Chennai, it has materialised. All four major reservoirs of the Tamil Nadu state capital have effectively run dry, their reserves dropping to a seventy-year low. This is severely affecting the capacity of the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage […]
When voters boycotted polls because of water scarcity in Gujarat
In Gujarat last month, voters turned to the polls to protest water scarcity in the state – by sitting them out entirely. The 17th Lok Sabha polls in Ahmedabad was the scene of fanfare on April 23rd, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast his vote in this year’s elections. However, elsewhere in the state, many […]
India’s water woes are bigger than you think
It is not even summer season and great swathes of India’s land are suffering from drought, recently published data reveals. This is according to an IndiaSpend analysis of figures from the Drought Early Warning System (DEWS), which contains dire implications for an enormous number of Indians and a sizeable proportion of the country’s land. At […]
1.5 degrees and what it means for India
A recent UN report has predicted a 1.5 °C temperature rise globally by 2040 – with potentially devastating implications for India. The state of the environment and the health of a nation are closely tied. This is being brought to the forefront of India’s attention currently with ever more evidence arising linking the country’s catastrophic […]