Institute of Hazard Risks and Resilience: Last week Archinect website carried a slightly intriguing design concept for ‘Landslide Mitigation Housing‘ by Jared Winchester and Viktor Ramos, which are residential units to be intentionally constructed on a landslide site.  The inspiration is a location in California at Rancho de Palos Verdes , near to Los Angeles, [...]

SciDevnet: Israeli researchers have designed a table that can withstand falling debris in the event of an earthquake. The table’s designers, Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, said it could be particularly valuable in schools, especially those built near geological fault lines or in developing countries, [...]

Natural disasters in Asia in 2011 could well prove to be the costliest ever, experts say. “Never before has this world suffered so much economic loss due to natural disaster, most of which has been in Asia and the Pacific,” Sanjay Srivastava, UN regional adviser for disaster risk reduction, told IRIN in Bangkok. Of the [...]

Noreen Haider: It has been more than six years when the Northern areas of Pakistan were hit by one of the most devastating earthquake in the history of the region. The earthquake measured 7.6 on the Richter scale and within the very few first seconds created an unimaginable devastation in an area of more than [...]

Business Recorder: Pakistan is losing cumulatively $1 billion per day due to the environmental degradation while the successive governments have never given serious attention to the issue. This was the crux of the seminar on “Strategic Environmental Assessment – in the context of Framework for Economic Growth – Taking the bull by the horns” organised [...]

On November 18, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters, claiming that scientists are “virtually certain” the world will have more extreme heat spells. By 2050, heat waves could be in the range of 5 degrees hotter, and 9 degrees by 2100. This increase [...]

Mongabay: The year 2011 has presented the world with a shocking increase in irregular weather and disasters linked to climate change. Just as the 2007 “big melt” of summer arctic sea ice sent scientists and environmentalists scrambling to re-evaluate the severity of climate change, so have recent events forced major revisions and updates in climate [...]

ChinaDaily: More than 30 million people in the Asia-Pacific region were displaced last year by environmental disasters, including floods and storms, and the number is likely to increase as droughts and floods become more severe. While many of those displaced eventually returned home when flood waters receded, many have now become migrants seeking more secure [...]

Good Environment: This graph from the  Energy Information Administration communicates the reality of renewable energy in America better than any other single source. Renewable energy covers only a small slice, 8 percent, of the country’s needs. And despite the focus on biofuels and solar power, the chart shows that more than a third of that slice [...]

NDTV India (Video): The video not only raises important questions about one of the Indian Himalayan States, its few Tributaries (Rivers) or about saving the lives of a few Mountain Dwellers, but, it is about status of Himalayas and Hindustan (India) itself. This very interesting video was released by NDTV India on 18 November 2011  [...]

Practical Action: This briefing focuses on the impact of climate change on Nepal’s rural poor. A great deal has been written  on the challenges of providing clean energy and the risks to urban populations but, as this paper outlines, climate change also has many other consequences. Rural communities, whose livelihoods are intimately tied to the [...]

CNN: Bhutan is the last of the Himalayan kingdoms. The small country is situated in the nooks and crannies of the highest mountain range on earth. It’s a special place that didn’t have paved roads until the 1960s, was off-limits to foreign tourists until the 1970′s, and didn’t have television until 1999, the last country [...]

Economic Times: India is paying a high price for its lack of disaster management practices — Rs.86,000 crore ($17.5 billion) every year to be precise, says a UN expert. “India is vulnerable, in varying degrees, to a large number of natural as well as manmade disasters,” J. Radhakrishnan, head of UNDP India’s Disaster Management wing, [...]

Himalayan Times: The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, is now warming up, and preparations are taking place. It will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, [...]

Mega dams have the multipurpose applications and considered as the greener energy source than most alternatives. But as compensation to this development it may result a wide range of environmental degradation. This study aims to search the fact of environmental impacts due to the existing and proposed mega dams of the Himalayas and also to [...]

Times of India: The earthquake that ravaged Sikkim on September 18 has had a welcome side-effect. It has sparked a serious debate among people on the issue of dams. Most Sikkimese today have turned against mega dams being built to harness the Teesta river for generating 20,000 MW of power through as many as 28 [...]

Kanglaonline: A one day consultation on dams and development in Manipur was organized by the Citizen Concern for Dams and Development (CCDD) at Manipur Press Club to review the trend of introducing of policies and mega development projects in Manipur. The first session of the consultation was marked by the sharing of views among representatives [...]

Friday Times: What role has climate change played in this year’s flooding? Climate change is the multiplier only – it is bad for everyone, especially the poor but it is even worse for the poor under bad governance. The present flooding in Sindh has affected all 23 districts, almost the entire province. The damage is [...]

Friday Times: With several inherent flaws, the draft National Climate Change Policy is likely to suffer the same fate as its predecessors A man asked a neighbourhood grocer for 25 kilogrammes of grain and said he would pay later. The grocer agreed and started weighing five portions of five kilos each. Each time he weighed, [...]

Kashmir Observer: Estimates of the magnitudes of past seismic events foretell a very shaky future for this pastoral Valley writes Dr Afroz Ahmad Shah. The earthquake studies in the state of Jammu of Kashmir, and primarily in the valley is still quite juvenile. Any kind of conclusion or opinion at this point of time will [...]

Times of India: India is at the forefront in using wireless technology, but lack of government participation is preventing the country from achieving the true growth it deserves, said Dr Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay, editor in chief of International Journal on Smart Sensing and intelligent Systems. An expert in the field of sensors and sensing technology, [...]

The Atlantic: From the increase in frequency of heatwaves to the spread of infectious diseases, changing weather patterns are already affecting us all. The consequences of climate change sometimes appear far off. But warming and changing weather patterns are already driving changes in public health. The following are seven ways in which climate change affects [...]

Deccan Chronical: The last decade has seen an intensification in earthquake activities. The 2004 Sumatra quake in Indonesia, which registered 9.3 on the Richter scale, has triggered stress in many areas. The Sikkim earthquake could be a manifestation of this stress. Earthquakes, some scientists believe, are on the rise. The earthquake in Fukushima in Japan [...]

Alertnet: The earth moves and across a metropolis, the schools and offices come crashing down, bridges snap sending cars smashing below, and fallen power lines set off fires. In seconds, the quake has left a world capital with mass casualties and economic losses. That could be the scenario in many of South Asia’s populous cities [...]

The Pioneer: The Sikkim earthquake has thrown both a challenge and an opportunity. UTPAL KUMAR, however, is not too sure if we will go for the right option It was one calamitous September morning that changed Japan forever. On September 1, 1923, a massive earthquake shook that country’s Kanto Plain, killing at least 100,000 people [...]

Times of India: The Everest climbers of Himachal are concerned about the impact of global warming and blurring charm of Himalayas. Having no obvious purpose, the frequent, unplanned and “commercial” expeditions to the Himalayan peaks are ruining their beauty, they said. With over 19 successful Everest climbers, Himachal being the prime producer of mountaineers, more [...]

Times of India:The mushrooming highrises along Hill Cart Road, Bidhan Road, or Sevoke Road in Siliguri were touted till the other day as a breakaway from the vanishing light one-storey houses with tin roofs in Ashrampara or Hakimpara that dotted the town some two decades ago. The tremor on Sunday that damaged apartments, malls, power [...]

Times of India: With the death toll climbing to at least 80, the recent Himalayan earthquake is an urgent wake-up call for all concerned — the government, policymakers and law enforcers. The effects of the 6.8 magnitude earthquake were felt across as many as six northern and eastern Indian states. The scale of devastation in [...]

NineMSN: Rescue teams backed by army engineers using explosives are trying to reach the remote epicentre of a powerful Himalayan earthquake that killed 83 people in India, Nepal and Tibet. Before the grim search for more victims can begin, the main challenge after Sunday’s 6.9-magnitude quake is to reach the isolated, mountainous impact zone on [...]

Hindustan Times: The earthquake that rocked Sikkim on Sunday is unusual in terms of its magnitude and nature of origin, say leading geologists. “There is nothing surprising in this earthquake as the region north of Sikkim, which forms the outliers of Tibetan tectonics, is known for moderate earthquakes in the past,” C P Rajendran at [...]

Economic Times: Even as the government authorities assessed the extent of damage to life and property on account of Sunday’s earthquake epicentred in Sikkim, the death toll touched 72 on Monday, with over 100 reportedly injured. The dead include 10 employees of the Sikkim-based Teesta Hydel Project, whose bodies were recovered on Monday. While the [...]

Syed Iqbal Hasnain: China’s high-stake poker game in Gilgit-Baltistan, a mountainous area that is part of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, will have disastrous environmental consequences for the entire South Asia region and beyond. Reports in the local and international media indicate that, over the past few years, Beijing has been steadily undertaking [...]

Coventry Telegraph: A COVENTRY nurse working in Pakistan fears the country could be hit hard by monsoon floods. Neva Khan, who grew up in Coventry and worked as a nurse in Nuneaton, has gone on to become Oxfam’s director in Pakistan. On the anniversary of the worst floods the country has ever seen – estimated [...]

Science Mag News: The 13 million people living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, sit on an “earthquake bomb,” says seismologist Syed Humayun Akhter of the University of Dhaka. But as recently as a decade ago, he notes, there was not a single seismologist in the country. That yawning talent gap is slowly closing, thanks in part to [...]

Around 20% of the Earth is at risk from at least one natural hazard and more than half the world’s six billion plus population is exposed. In a matter of minutes, at least one hazard can change the world they know. Only through incorporating risk into development planning can we start to reduce this exposure. [...]

Business Standard: National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has taken a slew of initiatives on disaster management by involving states and concerned agencies. In an interview with Sanjay Jog, NDMA vice chairman M Shashidhar Reddy takes reviews the present state of disaster management. Excerpts: Is India equipped to handle earthquake and tsunami similar to Japan?About 59 [...]

IBN Live: Two academicians from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, based on their studies as well as those by researchers in the past, call for a critical reevaluation of the current understanding of past earthquakes in the Himalayas. K Rajendran and C P Rajendran of the Centre for Earth Sciences, IISc, have, in a [...]

Research Communication IAS.AC.IN: We report here a paleolake record of outburst discovered at ~3245 m asl in the Spituk–Leh valley of the Indus river, Ladakh Himalaya. The >55 m thick sediment package is displayed by megascopic (metre scale) and intense injective liquefactions, slumping and gliding of the lake beds, and mega-scouring by gravelly outflow with [...]

Earthquakes could burst glacial lakes in the Himalayas, flooding populated areas downstream, scientists are warning. Navin Singh Khadka reports. Glacial lakes in the Himalayas could pose a major hazard to population centres if they are ruptured by earthquakes, scientists say. The true risk to settlements and infrastructure downstream in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region is difficult to assess. But [...]

Experts taking part in a day-long workshop on the disaster scenario of the North East with special reference to floods and earthquakes, were for a central regional database for developing an early warning system. The workshop was organized by the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). [...]

Floods, storms cause fewer deaths, but economic losses up Damage to infrastructure rising in developing countries Rich countries also more exposed to risk, UN report says The chance of dying in a weather-related disaster is diminishing worldwide, but economic losses from catastrophes are rising in all regions often due to a lack of investment, the [...]

Editor’s note: At UN-led climate-change talks in Bangkok in April, Japan did not discuss its climate-change actions, or its 25% emissions-reduction target – instead saying that, with the Fukushima nuclear crisis still unfolding, it is too early to talk about changes in energy supply and demand and the impact of those changes on climate-change negotiations. [...]

Pressure in the region’s crust is building up and could be released far more powerfully than previously imagined, the researchers warn. North India could experience a powerful earthquake, it could happen sooner than expected and wreak more damage than previously estimated, according to the findings of a research study by scientists at Bangalore’s respected Indian [...]

The consequences of the Japanese earthquake – especially the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant – resonate grimly for observers of the American financial crash that precipitated the Great Recession. Both events provide stark lessons about risks, and about how badly markets and societies can manage them. Of course, in one sense, there [...]

The blog is about the ongoing variability in climate condition and extremes in the Western Himalayan Mountains. This blog will contain information related to the phenomena affecting the climatic conditions in Himalayan Mountains, various influencing factors, the variability aspects, extremes, various pollution sources in the region and initiatives as mitigation and adaptive measures for sustainable mountain development by [...]