The global cost of disasters is growing: The economic burden of disasters is intensifying. While the direct costs of disasters averaged $70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000, between 2001 and 2020 these annual costs grew significantly to $180–200 billion. But the real cost is far higher. Disaster costs …
Searching through the rubble of his home for anything still whole, Laksmiah Poleh can see life's options quite clearly. He can give up and move his family back to their home state on the mainland and, if he's lucky, find work as a tenant farmer making Rs 1,700 a month. …
The archipelago of the Andaman and Nicobar islands consists of 572 islands; 35 are known to be inhabited. These are home to five tribes. The Jarawas, Sentinelese and Onges are Negrito tribes. The Andamanese have ceased to be a tribe and a pure-blood Andamanese is a rarity. The remaining two …
On January 4, the government announced that 901 people died and 6,010 were missing in the tsunami that hit Andaman and Nicobar islands on December 26. That cannot even be a half-truth. Samir Acharya, secretary of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, said that according to four Nicobarese tribal …
sanjib kumar roy Port Blair the andaman and Nicobar islands face a severe pollution threat from foreign trawlers that intrude into Indian waters and are apprehended by the country's security forces. The Indian Navy and the Coast Guards seize at least two such vessels every month. Most of these belong …
the Union government and the Andaman and Nicobar administration have decided to build a database on the Jarawa tribe. The Anthropological Survey of India (asi) has already initiated work in this regard. The government was under tremendous pressure from activists across the globe to collect the required information about the …
saving the act: The prime minister's office (PMO) has issued a directive that Union cabinet proposals having a bearing on decentralisation will have to be cleared by the newly-formed ministry of panchayati raj affairs, along with other ministries concerned. This is to ensure that ministries do not make parallel implementation …
environmentalists and non-governmental organisations (ngo) of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are up in arms against a move by the Central Agricultural Research Institute (cari), Port Blair, to introduce a molluscicide targeting the African giant snails (Achatina fulica). They fear that since most pesticides are not host specific, the new molluscicide …
In the second week of August this year, when a severe pest attack ravaged the coconut crop in Neil islands in the South Andamans, the villagers turned to scientists from the Port-Blair-based Central Agricultural Research Institute (cari) for help. But shouldn't officers of the agriculture department of the Andaman and …
the uncertainty regarding the fate of the Jarawas, the endangered tribe living in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has increased. During a recent meeting, the concerned authorities failed to evolve a consensus on the closure of certain parts of Andaman Trunk Road (atr), which cuts through the Jarawa Reserve. The …
The communication by Singh et al. on single nucleotide polymorphisms among the Jarawas of the Andaman Islands appears to be a purely academic endeavour. The evident outcome of the study is the discovery of polymorphism in two genes. The authors have not elaborated on the significance of the discovery for …
Discovery and validation of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome is an active area of interest, because of their usefulness in evolutionary and disease-association studies. The researchers have resequenced 70 chromosomes from the Jarawa, a Negrito tribal group inhabiting the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago for a = 10 …
can feral goats actually survive on seawater? This is the crux of a controversy embroiling the ruminant that inhabits the volcanic Barren Island, situated 135 kilometres from Andaman and Nicobar Islands' capital Port Blair. Even as research conducted by the Central Agricultural Research Institute (cari) suggests that the animal consumes …
prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's recent announcement in Bangkok that Andaman and Nicobar Islands' capital Port Blair would be twinned with Thailand's tourist haven Phuket was greeted by protests in the union territory (ut). It is apprehended that any association with Phuket, which is said to be a sex tourism …
the very outsiders for whom forests were cleared to enable them to settle in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are now being expected to play a pivotal role in protecting the union territory's (ut) rapidly receding green cover. The ut is set to adopt the Joint Forest Management (jfm) programme …
left high and dry due to rampant sand mining, the tribal people of the Car Nicobar region of Andaman and Nicobar Islands have asked the local administration to clamp down on the activity immediately. The extraction continues unabated in spite of a May 7, 2002, Supreme Court (sc) directive stipulating …
It is not flora and fauna alone that are under threat of extinction. Tribal people, too, seem to be living on the edge. The populations of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode of western Paraguay, the Jarawa of Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Gana and Gwi and Bakgalagadi in Botswana are …
even as the Andaman and Nicobar coast is witnessing the June-end whirl of shark fishing activity, the local administration and conservationists are at harpoons drawn. The row has intensified, with reports of over-fishing by local fisherfolk and illegal trawling by their Thai counterparts pouring in. It may be noted that …
is the Andaman Works Department (awd) an expert body on eco-tourism? It will, in the near future, monitor the construction of hotels and resorts on hectares of as-yet unspoilt beaches in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The union territory plans to open its ecologically and culturally fragile areas to
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are the third most significant biodiversity hotspot in India. With a coastline of 1962 kilometres and many beaches straddling small isolated islands, the region provides an ideal nesting habitat for primarily four species of marine turtles: the leatherback turtle, hawksbill turtle, green sea turtle and …
