The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
This paper estimates the impact on local household livelihoods of the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP), the largest logging ban programme in the world that aims to protect watershed and conserve natural forests. In doing so it use a series of policy evaluation micro-econometric techniques to assess the impacts of …
The rapid increase in food prices in many countries has led to substantial media attention on agriculture. This publication does not attempt to cover everything there is to know about agricultural ecosystems. Rather, it tries to present well documented facts and figures to better understand the challenges facing the sustainable …
National Sample Survey data in Income, Expenditure and Productive Assests of Farmer Households, 2003 showed that 96 per cent of farmer households are in deficit and half of the households are indebted. Debt waiver can only be welcomed in such a situation. Once indebted, marginal and small farmers will hardly …
The Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects, brought out by the union government, is an adapted version of the Parthasarathy Committee Report. This article highlights some of the major features of the guidelines and discusses ways to take forward the main concerns that have engaged much of the recent policy …
A recent study - "Linking Community-Based Water and Forest Management for Sustainable Livelihoomds of Poor in Fragile Catchments of the Indus-Ganges Basin' - conducted by People Science Institute (PSI) here, shows a remarkable shift from farm- based to non-farm activities in Hilaungad Watershed of Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand. Only 14 per cent …
Streo Cartosat-1 satellite data was processed to generate high spatial resolution digital elevation model (DEM) using ground control points (GCPs) collected through geodetic single frequency GPS in differential GPS mode. DEM was processed to generate bare earth DEM by removing heights of natural and man made features from DEM. The …
This report traces Beijing's 60-year transformation from relative water abundance to water crisis, and the main policy responses to keep water flowing to China's capital. Official data indicates that Beijing's population growth, industrial development, and its expansion of irrigated farmland have driven huge increases in water consumption since 1949. The …
Green revolution in India has bypassed the remote places like hills. Farmers who are struggling for survival under unfavorable conditions like hills need focus. In Uttarakhand, only 13.62 per cent is the net cultivated area. Agriculture in Uttarakhand is primarily confined to lower and mid hill regions and is basically …
The Union Agriculture Ministry has worked out a package for revival of the farm sector in the drought-hit Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on the lines of the Rehabilitation Package for Vidarbha and other drought-prone districts where farmers' suicides were high. Among other measures for relief, the …
Effective management from the production stage to the distribution stage is necessary to maintain the price line. The PDS has a crucial role in ensuring this. The prices of essential articles and commodities have been rising over the last several months, and the life of the poor people, the common …
The Forest Department will soon finalise the mechanism for making payments to farmers under the carbon credit scheme for raising forests on private and community land as part of the World Bank-funded Mid-Himalayan Watershed Development Project. Himachal last year became the first state in Asia and only second in the …
Marketing several environmental services from a single area can help access diverse sources of funding and make conservation a more competitive land use. In Bolivia's Los Negros valley (Department of Santa Cruz), bordering the Ambor
This report begins with definitions of watersheds and watershed management, a characterization of the problem of watershed degradation, and a short history of watershed management operations and policies. It discusses the findings on watershed management approaches and methodologies. It looks at findings on institutions for watershed management and reviews the …
Few payment for environmental services (PES) schemes in developing countries operate outside of the central state's umbrella, and are at the same time old enough to allow for a meaningful evaluation. Ecuador has two such decentralised, consolidated experiences: the five-year old Pimampiro municipal watershed-protection scheme and the twelve-year old PROFAFOR …
Mexico faces both high deforestation and severe water scarcity. The Payment for Hydrological Environmental Services (PSAH) Program was designed to complement other policy responses to the crisis at the interface of these problems. Through the PSAH, the Mexican federal government pays participating forest owners for the benefits of watershed protection …
Payments for environmental services (PES) are an innovative approach to conservation that has been applied increasingly often in both developed and developing countries. To date, however, few efforts have been made to systematically compare PES experiences.
Mainstreaming gender and engendering development has now become a part of feminist and development discourse. This paper is a case study of the mv Foundation, which has implemented its programme of "Empowering Women through Collective Action' in the Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh. It shows how this foundation had …
In spite of getting diverse interests of commissioning power plant at Kaptai in Chittagong Hill Tracts, its ecological consequences were many-fold. Firstly, the population pressure increased in the vicinity of the Kaptai lake for swallowing most of the best valley-bottom land and consequently there was an acute shortage of suitable …
Watershed management is critical to sustain the benefits from the development of small water storages or small dams in Barani Areas, said Asian Development Bank's experts. In a project review report on "Watershed Management Constraints in Barani Areas", Sedimentation Surveys of sample dams in the Pothowar region reveal that loss …
