Environment News Service: India is considering integrating Israeli water technologies into a national initiative to clean up the polluted Ganges River, which provides water for 40 percent of India’s population in 11 states through which it flows. Indian engineers, scientists and officials from water technology companies visited Israel late last month to explore the possibilities. [...]

Hill Post: Ignorance is not always bliss; not when the climate and pristine ecology is at stake. A change in the climate that has served millions of life forms from the beginning of time does not just affect our surroundings. It ropes in our future generations too. 2 years ago, I crossed the Rohtang Pass [...]

The Gazette: For the last 11,700 years, mankind has lived in what geologists refer to as the Holocene epoch. This interglacial period has been defined by its stable warm climatic conditions that have allowed Homo sapiens to populate the Earth and become its dominant species. Many scientists now believe that over the last 200 years, [...]

Financial Express: The ambitious plans of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) of Government of India to conserve lakes and rivers in the country have failed to deliver, with more than 80% of the projects not being completed on time and others not being utilised despite being constructed. These are the findings of a [...]

Nepal News: Within a decade, air pollution has grown at an alarming rate in the Kathmandu Valley. The capital has turned into as one of the dirtiest cities in the world. Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, is located at an elevation of approximately 1,400 meters in the bowl-shaped basin. Known for its exquisite environment [...]

Science 2.0: Although the fundamental tenets of many religions may have some bearing on conservation activities, the relationship between spiritualism and environmentalism is perhaps most obvious in the case of Buddhism. The close ties between Buddhism and conservation-mindedness were recently described by His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, in an essay published [...]

Eurasia Review: Time has come to become serious about the future of the river. There is a growing perception that the Ganga might completely dry in next fifty years if no effective action is taken to purify the river, keep the flow of its water intact and control the global warming. There cannot be a [...]

Kuenselonline: While world over livestock population is experiencing an alarming increase to cater to as alarming an increase in demand for meat and diary products, Bhutan is headed the other way. That is quite befitting of the country’s emphasis and priority for environmental protection that draws its essence from its guiding philosophy of Gross National [...]

Deccan Herald: The government has earmarked Rs 15,000 crore more to make the river pollution free. Thousands of people took a holy dip in the Ganga river at Patna on the occasion of one of the most auspicious festival Chhath this year, but an equal number avoided the sacred river in the wake of reports [...]

Kuenselonline: The Wangchu river that runs through Thimphu city, Bhutan’s biggest and fastest growing urban centre, is more polluted as it passes through the main town and flows downstream, a report prepared by the National Environment Commission concludes. The report collected data between March last year and April this year, from monitoring sites set up [...]

Brisbane Times: Time is running out for Kashmir’s premier tourist attraction, writes Ben Doherty, in Srinagar. Through the dawn mist, Dal Lake is beautiful. As the first shafts of sunlight break over the Himalayan foothills that hug the lake’s perimeter, the still waters are slowly brought alive by the silent ferrying of the shikaras back [...]

CSDi is presenting a compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities—complete with links to source materials and technical information. The content of field activities is given broadly in following heads: 1. Agriculture a. Soil and water conservation for agriculture. b. Developing water for agriculture. c. Agriculture in flood-prone or waterlogged areas. d. CBA techniques for agriculture. [...]

Kuenselonline: The Big Four ought to do their bit to reduce the waste created from consuming their products. Cold Drinks Companies It is a very common sight to find disposed plastic bottles littering an area almost anywhere in Bhutan. The most common brands on these disposed plastic bottles belong to four major companies of Bhutan Agro, [...]

Reuters: The Earth’s natural resources like food, water and forests are being depleted at an alarming speed, causing hunger, conflict, social unrest and species extinction, experts at a climate and health conference in London warned on Monday. Increased hunger due to food yield changes will lead to malnutrition; water scarcity will deteriorate hygiene; pollution will [...]

Vancouversun: India’s Yamuna River, one of the world’s most heavily polluted waterways, is to be transformed from an “open sewer” to a multi-million-dollar ecoholiday destination. Officials have released ambitious plans to turn the rank riverbanks into a playground for New Delhi’s increasingly affluent middle classes by 2015. For Hindus, the Yamuna is considered to be [...]

Prakash Kumar: The impending crisis in India for water is very much foreseeable in next 5-10 years. The crisis is not going to happen because of shortage of water but its poor management. The same is true for the Himalayan region the “water kingdom” of the world. Slowly we are robbing this once mighty water [...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay: The importance of Climate Himalaya’s knowledge banking and outreach building efforts, one expects, should be portrayed in our essays. An appeal for a pan Himalayan co-operation is already expressed by Noreen, which apart from making good sense for Himalayan people shines a hope for redemption of the long troubled relationship of two neighboring [...]

Amrit Banstola: Harsh weather and extreme climatic events are expected to become more common as a result of climate change in Nepal (LI-BIRD, 2006). Extreme weather events such as floods, landslides, heat waves, storms, extreme cold, fires, and droughts are among the well-established consequences of climate change in Nepal. Health conditions like heat stroke, injuries, [...]

HindustanTimes: The Ganga is the cleanest river in the world. Mumbai does not have slums. And Delhi is the politest city in the universe. Unless you are one of those ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ t-shirt-wearing types (only statements, not action) who believe that the Golden Age of India is never-ending and the country is in an [...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay: Do you guys remember the school in Leh where Fungchook Wangdoo went back to – in the popular movie ’3 Idiots’ by Amir Khan? I am talking about the Druk Padma Karpo School where the movie was partly shot and the school that was devastated in the 2010 cloud burst. I guess you [...]

As part of Climate Himalaya Initiative’s Policy Advocacy efforts on various Climate Change issues,  we  are highlighting the sanitation and pollution embedded scenario across Himalayan region. It includes the garbage coming from a house to one dumped by municipality/ urban local body, and from our various religious practices to tourist influx adding the muck. We [...]

Continuing developments in GIS software are opening up a number of possibilities for capturing and processing geographical data, and then presenting it via the internet. The ability to manage information on water and sanitation services and then overlay it onto Google Earth images has wide-ranging benefits for project planning and design, and for monitoring, advocacy and [...]

Times of India: The sun glares down at the Himalayan temple town of Gangotri, located at an altitude of 10,300 ft in the Garhwal Himalayas. This is the home of the Ganga, India’s holiest river, whose physical source at Gaumukh lies just 19 km away. Looking at the river as it bounds off smoothly polished [...]

Thimphu, the fast-developing capital of the Kingdom of Bhutan, is one of the cities most vulnerable to climate change in the world. But it is unprepared for the crisis, reports Dawa T Wangchuk. Over the past few decades, Thimphu – the capital of Bhutan – has transformed from a beautiful little town into a modern, [...]

In south Asian region over 75 percent of the people live in rural areas, those have little access to safe potable water systems. Until, recently, people depended more on surface water which was exposed to microbial contamination resulting in water related disease like gastroenteritis, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, infectious hepatitis, infant diarrhoeas, and skin diseases and [...]

The past decade can be termed as the decade of disastrous devolution in Pakistan. First, it was the unchecked grassroots devolution which wreaked havoc with the district management systems under the garb of responsive local governance and now it is the constitutionally driven devolution which is demolishing various federal structures in the name of provincial [...]

(Reuters) – Asia needs to work to ensure the potential of its economic and political rise is realized, including fulfilling its responsibilities as a global player, the Asian Development Bank said ahead of its annual meeting next week in Vietnam. Home to 3.3 billion people, Asia has led the global economy in recent years, and [...]

At least seventeen children were killed and more are feared trapped under the debris of a school building that collapsed following a cloudburst in Uttarakhand’s Kapkot village. It is not known as to how many children were in the school at the time of tragedy. The bodies of seventeen children have been recovered and rescue [...]

Dhaka, May 23 (UNB)- The link between climate change-induced migration and the spectre of urban poverty that has become more and more pronounced in recent years on the streets of capital Dhaka, emerged as a point of contention at a policy dialogue on ‘Environment, Climate Change and Migration’ at the Brac Centre on Sunday. The [...]

Nitin Sethi, TOI Crest, May 15, 2010 Geetika Narang walks around Connaught Place in Delhi, asking random people two simple questions: “Where do you get your water from and where does your shit go?” She is assisting Pradip Saha make a documentary: Faecal Attraction. It’s on the death of the Yamuna. “My water? I guess, [...]

Of 1.42 million villages in India, 1,96,813 are affected by chemical contamination of water. A recent United Nations report says that more than three million people in the world die of water-related diseases due to contaminated water, which includes 1.2 million children. In India, over one lakh people die of water-borne diseases annually. It is [...]

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 [...]