In 2023, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded a total of 399 disasters related to natural hazards. These events resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. The economic losses amounted to US$202.7 billion. The 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and the Syrian Arab Republic was the most catastrophic event …
The provisional figures for India’s forest cover are now ready, and Down To Earth has managed to acquire a copy. (see table: Change in forest cover) The figures, when compared to earlier ones, show an overall increase of 236, 800 ha of forest. Is that really so? Every two years, …
Our houses gobble up energy and spew out carbon dioxide. Shocking, but true. Buildings, primarily residential and commercial facilities, are responsible for approximately 35 per cent of us greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. Ventilation and insulation are not given adequate emphasis in urban layouts. Consequently, urban sprawls manage to use more …
There was a time in the recently liberalised past when people didn't quite know how to refer to a new product called drinking water. They would say 'bottled water' and 'mineral water' to freely refer to one or the other kind of water, perhaps meaning the same one. It used …
Why are there pesticide residues in bottled water? This isn"t an isolated query. It condenses 3-4 lines of questioning: • What kind of water do companies use as raw material? • Companies are supposed to "treat" the raw water, clean it up. If so, then what kind of clean-up is …
ireland's first dioxin emissions inventory has turned conventional notions on their head. The recently compiled document has found that domestic burning of waste, rather than incineration, is the biggest source of dioxins in the country. The 'Inventory of Dioxin and Furan emissions to air, land and water in Ireland for …
In 1985, the Union ministry of non-conventional energy sources (mnes) introduced improved chulhas (fuelwood-based cooking stoves) to primarily conserve forests, reduce pressure on rural women who collect fuelwood and to protect their health against indoor air pollution. Called the National Programme on Improved Chulhas (npic), it formed a part of …
It is ironic that while India ranks third in fertiliser use worldwide, it ranks 14 and 16 respectively in the production of rice and wheat. It is even more ironic that India’s fertiliser policy ensures precisely such a result. Fertiliser use in India is dictated by the larger perceived need …
Agricultural growth in India has always laboured under the burden of producing more. The idea was: grow only foodgrains. That meant: not ecologically adapted cereals such as millets, but rice and wheat. The green revolution programme was single-minded: it came up with hyv (high-yielding variety) seeds for rice and wheat …
A third factor has led to the current debility of soils in India: irrigation. That is to say, water over-use. To feed the rice-wheat mentality, net irrigated area rose from 20.8 million ha in 1950 to 53.5 million ha in 1995-1996. Fed on irrigation, the agricultural area grew from a …
Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that humans cannot just plough through the ecology they interact with. apply gypsum: Seven lakh ha of land in …
• Oil provides energy for 95 per cent of the world’s transportation - Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, had an annual profit of US $17 billion in 2001 (equivalent to about five per cent of India’s GDP) - Oil, which could have made Nigeria one of the world’s wealthiest …
What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us. function openpoptable(){ var popurl="http://dte-new/dte-new/html/20030131_cover2.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=475,height=500, …
poor people invariably bear the burden of development. A recent study is another testimony to this fact. It indicates global warming has led to more malaria in East Africa
bored with the humdrum life of the office? Time to take some action, but Michael Keaton should not be your rolemodel. In the famous movie, Multiplicity, Keaton made his clone do all the dirty work, while he had the time of his life. However, the fun did not last too …
does a marginal improvement in fuel economy make a vehicle green? This is the controversy surrounding a recent proposal of the Bush administration. The proposal aims to increase the fuel economy
