Hill post: The Himalayas are being pounded again. Timber was stolen first; medicinal and aromatic herbs next. Now power projects are stealing water, life line for 30 million mountain folks and 3 billion in the Himalayan-water-dependent nations, as far as Vietnam. [1] The reassessed country-wise potential is: Pakistan: 41,722 MW, India 108,143 MW; Nepal 83,000

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Scidev.net: While satellite data has shown aerosols — tiny polluting particles in the air — to be rising over India, a new study based on primary data gathered from measuring instruments installed in a network of stations confirms the trend. The study, by a team from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, and Indian Institute

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Shalini Dhyani: Writes about hill agriculture, agro-forest and such ecosystem practices from Indian Himalayan region. She emphasizes on improving the socio-economic condition of mountain people by adopting a range of animal husbandry, agro-forestry and traditional agriculture practices through better scientific and technical inputs. Entire Himalayan ecosystem is undergoing rapid land-use and climatic changes in last

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Business Standard: Climate change is likely to bring down the production of key foodgrain crops like wheat and rice in the country by up to 18% in 2020, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said today. “Climate change is projected to reduce timely sown irrigated wheat production by about 6% in 2020. In case of late sown

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PIB: There is no clear cause and effect established between global warming and excessive rains and floods. Monsoon rainfall varies on different spatial and temporal scales. Extreme rainfall events that occur at some isolated places (viz. heavy rainfall over Mumbai or in Rajasthan) are highly localized and are part of the natural variability of the

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HT: Voicing his concern on “painfully slow” progress in climate talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hit at rich nations for not doing enough to fight climate change. Singh, while inaugurating the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial, also made it clear that rich nations, who were responsible for a bulk of global warming causing greenhouse gas emissions,

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NRDC: I found it quite interesting that an Indian city should have a proper ‘action plan’ to tackle the effects of changing climate patterns that have resulted in some severe summer temperatures in the last decade. Living in India, the action plans by city or state administrations we have mostly seen are: close schools and

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In a world where it’s commonly believed that one person can’t make a difference, one Indian man is proving that argument to be false. Jadav Molai Payeng is a modern-day hero to those who fight to protect natural habitats around the world. He’s not a traditional activist, but a man who was motivated 30 years

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The Better India: Puja Devi, 30, watches with satisfaction as her young son gulps down his glass of milk and then reaches for his satchel, ready to go to school. For some months now, the happy mother has been able to provide milk for her son every day, a far cry from earlier times when

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The Washington Post has updated the story to include climate as a reason for variability in water supplies. While the original did not discuss climate change, the addition of this in the fourth paragraph, plus the inclusion of a quote from former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh now complete the story. We applaud them for updating the story. The

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IHCAP: A Capacity Building Programme on Himalayan Glaciology was inaugurated on 02 April 2013 at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India) in the presence of Swiss Ambassador to India Dr. Linus von Castelmur and Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. The press release states that the Capacity Building Programme

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The Hindu: Chinese reticence about projects on its stretch of the Brahmaputra do not assuage Indian fears about diversion of the river’s waters. By raising the Brahmaputra dams construction issue during his first meeting with the new Chinese President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was following a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, Dr.

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The Natural Environment Research Council of the UK (NERC) and the Earth System Science Organization, Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Republic of India (ESSO-MoES) have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to facilitate cooperation between the UK and Indian earth system science and environmental research communities. The UK and India have shared interests and

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Nature: The vulnerable north eastern states of India — which bear a significant brunt of the global climate change phenomena — have finally got some serious attention from climate scientists. The eight states, least studied so far, have been thoroughly analysed over a 34-year period in a new study.1 Based on the trends observed from

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SciDev.Net: India needs micro-level scientific assessment at the state, district and village levels for effective planning and implementation of measures to combat climate change, a national workshop has highlighted. The workshop on  climate-resilient development, organised last month (13 February), discussed integrating climate change into development programmes in semi-arid regions like Bundelkhand in central India. Participants

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Times of India: GitaDevi of Kullu used to routinely visit apple orchards and jungles every morning, collect some guchhi ( morel mushroom, also known as common morel, morel or yellow morel) and leave it to dry near the tandoor and sell it for high prices to traders at her doorstep. She used to earn good

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Preeti Soni, Advisor (Climate Change), UNDP India, talks to OneWorld South Asia, on the sidelines of an international conference held in New Delhi earlier this month. OneWorld South Asia: How do the challenges brought by climate change present an opportunity for better management of natural resources in India? Preeti Soni: Climate change is of course

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RTCC: The latest Globe Climate Legislation Study was published in January 2013, focusing on 33 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. For the first time climate policymakers have a clear idea of how countries around the world are attempting to control their greenhouse gas emissions. We have selected the highlights from Globe’s analysis

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Zee News: Posing serious threats to the survival of ecosystem in Arunachal Pradesh and having deeper socio-economic impacts, large parts of the eastern Himalayas may become devoid of snow if temperature continues to rise due to climate change, experts say. “In the event of an increase in temperature by 0.5 degree Celsius about 912 sq

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Money Control: Anyone skeptical about the effects of global warming should listen to those who work in the Himalayas. Asia’s great mountain range is already affected by climate change and scientists say it will experience yet more dramatic impacts in the future – with possibly grave consequences. Anyone skeptical about the effects of global warming

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Climate News Network: India has made giant strides in increasing rice production, both to feed its own people and for export. But the price has been massive water consumption, and rising greenhouse gas emissions. LONDON, 30 January – India has to find a new model of development if the twin challenges of job creation and

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The Ganga today is more polluted than when the Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1985. Dams, barrages, canals and extremely high pollution pose an ever-increasing threat to the health and life of the river, writes Brijesh Pandey IN THE upper reaches of the Ganga, numerous hydel projects threaten the river’s ecosystem. And in the

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UNDP: The Ministry of Rural Development, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today released a report “Greening Rural Development in India”. The report presents strategies for inclusive rural development embodying the principles of environmental sustainability. The Report assumes particular significance in the light of the Twelfth Five Year Plan, which has as

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WRI: Water is a scarce resource in India, especially in the state of Maharashtra, where most rainfall is limited to the monsoon season from June through September. The Government of India has long promoted a Participatory Watershed Development (PWD) approach to deal with this scarcity, focusing on technical and social interventions to restore barren landscapes,

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NY Times: A multichannel mammoth stretching up to 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, the Brahmaputra River in Assam causes havoc every year when it floods. Now climate change is intensifying the hydrological cycle. Brian Orland, a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow, is starting a nine-month study on climate change adaptation along the Brahmaputra River, where the environment challenges

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Zee News: Unprecedented dam building in the Indian Himalaya holds serious consequences for biodiversity and could pose a threat to human lives and livelihoods, researchers have found. The team was led by Professor Maharaj K. Pandit from the University Scholars Programme at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prof Pandit, who also holds a courtesy

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CSE: Study quantifies the impact of hydel projects on the ecology of the mountain range. THE Himalayas are virtually under bombardment—of dams. They would have the highest dam density in the world, with over a thousand water reservoirs dotting the mountain range in India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan, over the next few years. These projects

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SciDev.net: Algal biofuels, like crops, demand land, water, fertilisers, pesticides and inputs that are costly for India, says Hoysall Chanakya Of late, there is heady euphoria over ‘green’ algal biofuels that are dangled as a panacea for developing countries such as India. While it is true that algal biofuels can contribute to a fossil fuel-free

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Varad Pande, Officer on Special Duty to Jairam Ramesh, the rural development minister and former environment minister says more work is needed to break through the deadlocks. “We need to make negotiations an ongoing, rather than an episodic, process, with at least 120 to 150 days of active negotiations every year,” Pande wrote in India’s

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SciDev.Net: Fast-developing countries such as India should offer up their domestic action plans as part of global efforts when the world gathers for the UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December, says Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. India’s priority is not simply reducing global emissions as quickly as possible but

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Alertnet: It is a well acknowledged fact that the impacts of climate change will be more severe in regions wherein the dependency on climate sensitive sectors for securing livelihoods is high. People associated with these sectors have a great deal to lose from exposure to increased variability in the climate, its extremes and changing contours.

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The Global Warming Policy Foundation: A Times of India article perpetrates a fraud on its readers. It takes estimates of deaths from forces of nature and then ascribes it not just to climate but to climate change. A misleading report in the Times of India, purportedly based on the Global Burden of Disease 2010 (GBD) study published last week in the Lancet,

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Yale School of F&E: She’s welcome to stay for as long as she likes” my mother says when I ask her if I could bring a friend home to stay over for a few days “now we receive water supply everyday”, she adds triumphantly. Provision of water to households in Bangalore, India’s sixth largest city and my

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Times of India: The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought expert help from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) after being told by Central Pollution Control Board that despite Rs 5,000 crore spent to reduce pollution, the Yamuna was staring at a catastrophe as over 2,400 million litres of untreated sewage flowed into it every day.

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Daily Pioneer: Climate change is a major challenge for developing countries like India which are exposed to greater risk from this phenomenon. The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) director general VK Bahuguna said this after inaugurating a training programme on climate change, forest ecosystem and biodiversity- vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies for scientists

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Dandc.eu: India is expected to feel severe impacts of climate change. The country’s northeastern region, for instance, is highly vulnerable. Anticipated impacts include melting of glaciers, more floods and extended droughts. At the same time, the region’s natural resources are under enormous pressure due to population growth and rising prosperity. Germany’s KfW Development Bank has

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First Post: Climate change leading to natural disasters, particularly flood and erosion, has affected the livelihood options of thousands of people across Assam, a study has found out. The impact of the climate change is most pronounced among marginalised women, but it has also pushed people from prosperous families into taking up work of domestic

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Hindustan Times: India may have got what it wants from Doha climate talks but piggy-bagging China may not be of help in future with China’s emissions witnessing much higher growth than that of India. India was able to regain some lost ground by getting equity and common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) with respective capabilities back

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Huffingtonpost: During a public event at the United Nations climate change conference in Doha, India’s veteran environmentalist Sunita Narain told a senior negotiator from India, “The Indian government should take a principled stand and walk out of the Doha climate talks if equity is not made a part of the deal.” On the same evening,

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Economic Times: UN Climate Change Negotiations 2012: India acquires key role in tech transfer for combating climate change. India has acquired a key role in technology transfer for combating climate change after the country took a lead role in an agreement for a mechanism on transferring of expertise to developing countries. Technology Information, Forecasting and

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Nature: Himalayan plans pose ecological threat, researchers warn. The days when the gigantic Indian rivers — the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra — roar freely down the steep slopes of the Himalayas may be numbered. Roughly 300 dams are proposed or under construction in the deeply cut valleys of India’s mountainous north, part of a massive

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The NewYork Times: With one week left for the U.N. climate change talks to conclude, developed and developing countries remain at odds on how to solve the crisis being linked to the recent spate of extreme weather events that have claimed lives and destroyed property worth billions of dollar. India has agreed to a take

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Business Standard: The Dohatalks, which were initiated with the promise of coming up with a new regime to stall the spiraling effect of climate change, failed to deliver on the promises so far. Even as the talks enter the sixth day, the Indian industry and the government are keeping their hopes low for a favourable

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The Sydney Morning Herald: More than 190 countries are meeting in Doha, Qatar, from November 26 to December 7 to make progress on a new deal to fight climate change, due to be agreed by 2015 and come into force in 2020. The current emissions-cutting pact, the Kyoto Protocol, commits most developed states to binding

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NATO Review Magazine: Few would predict that growing populations, decreasing resources and climate change will have an effect on security. But what could they be? And how will they affect heavily-populated areas of the world? Michael Kugelman looks at the potential changes for South Asia in general, and India in particular. Few regions are more

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Shankar Sharma: A survey report of a large number of coal power plants in US (as forwarded below) has a huge relevance to Indian power sector. A 2000 report on power plant pollution in US is reported to have found that all power plants in the U.S. (both coal and other fuel sources) are responsible

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Phys.org: On the night of Aug. 5, 2010, as residents slept, water began rushing through Leh, an Indian town in a high desert valley in the Himalayas. Average total rainfall in the area for August is about a half-inch. During this 24-hour period more than 8 inches fell, causing severe damage and leaving 193 dead,

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Sciencedaily: Global warming could cause frequent and severe failures of the Indian summer monsoon in the next two centuries, new research suggests. The effects of these unprecedented changes would be extremely detrimental to India’s economy which relies heavily on the monsoon season to bring fresh water to the farmlands. The findings have been published November

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Scidevnet: A pledge to increase support for biodiversity targets in developing countries is welcome, but care for indigenous people is vital too. This month’s meeting of the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), held in Hyderabad in India, came as a reality check on the capacity of

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  Climate Expert: Climate variability refers to the variations in the mean state of the climate. Variations are per se a natural feature of a climate system, but recent trends show a massive increase in global mean temperature and a linkage between temperature increase and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. And as data continue to

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Scidev.net: India is expanding its biodiversity databases and linking them in a network so that policymakers for programmes that address biodiversity, climate changeand socio-economic concerns have ready access to information. An Indian Bioresources Information Network (IBIN) was launched this month (11 October) by M. S. Swaminathan, eminent crop scientist and founder of the M.S. Swaminathan

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IDS: A new synthesis report (pdf) about the challenges posed by climate change in India has found that changes in temperature and rainfall will have a serious effect on already fragile farming communities. The report is part of a joint project by the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Indian Ministry

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Alertnet: Since India’s independence, the mammoth task of feeding its hundreds of millions, most of whom are extremely poor, has been a major challenge to policymakers. In the coming decades, the issue of food insecurity is likely to affect almost all Indians. However, for the poorest amongst us, it could be catastrophic. India ranks 65

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Scidev.Net: Large-scale cultivation of Jatropha – known as a potential source of biofuel – can improve the soil quality of degraded lands and address climate change, says a new study. Jatropha curcas seeds yield oil that can be processed into biodiesel, but scientists at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad,

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CBD has been of no help for the Indian rivers, riverine biodiversity and dependent communities. On the contrary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), another UN Convention, certifies hydropower projects of all sizes as climate-friendly projects under the CDM mechanism. All of these projects have severe adverse impacts on biodiversity and related livelihoods.”

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Newyork Times: INDIA’S monsoon rains are retreating this week, a delayed end to a yearly wet season that has become ever more unpredictable as a result of global warming. Of all the challenges that face India, few are more pressing than how it manages water. In vast cities like New Delhi, where showers and flush

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CBD: Representatives from over 170 countries today began deliberations in Hyderabad, India, on the way forward to protect the planet’s biodiversity. The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known as COP 11 for short, follows on the historic outcomes of the 2010 Nagoya biodiversity

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The Department of Science and Technology (DST) of Government of India is organizing a 2 days stakeholders workshop at Palampur in Himachal Pradesh during 6-7 Oct 2012 on National Mission for Sustaining Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE), one of the eight missions of Government of India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC).  The purpose of the

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Multi-model climate change projections for India under representative concentration pathways Climate projections for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are made using the newly developed representative concentration pathways (RCPs) under the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project 5 (CMIP5). This article provides multi-model and multi-scenario temperature and precipitation projections for India

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DNA: Northern parts of the country and the Himalayan region will be the worst hit by climate change in India and warming will be greater over land than sea, according to a latest report. “In the 2020s, the projected warming is of the order of 0.5-1.5 degree Celsius , by the 2050s, 3 degree celsius

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