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 …
Wars keep children out of school. So does sickness. But in Niger, a sun-baked land where drought occurs with alarming frequency, a major impediment to education is thirst and the long trek required to quench it. The school day had already begun on a recent morning as a procession of …
Over 10,000 villages and 15 of Maharashtra's 35 districts face a drought-like situation. Malti Palvi, a 27-year-old housewife from Sakhare, a village in Thane district around 80 km from Mumbai, stands in a queue to take water from a nearby well at 6 a.m. Her turn comes only after 2 …
It will be a while before Karnataka can expect any grant from the Centre for drought relief. The Central drought assessment team headed by Parvesh Sharma on Wednesday directed the State government to furnish detailed statistics within a week’s time. The officials, at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister …
The Central team touring the State to assess the drought situation has concluded that the drought in Chitradurga district is severe. A member of the team, D Rajashekar, Deputy Advisor, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, New Delhi, told mediapersons in Chitradurga on Tuesday that the water table had depleted …
Minister for water resources Pawan Kumar Bansal is reported to have been horrified to have learnt of the macabre incident in which a mother, Qadeeran, and her youngest son, Rasheed, were killed by her two elder sons, Nafees and Anees, over a water dispute in Banda district of Bundelkhand. Plunging …
GANDHINAGAR: A high-level committee of Government of India's (GoI's) finance ministry has cleared a proposal that would enable the Gujarat government to receive nearly 90 per cent of all funds over the new five-year plan, 2012-17, for completing the unfinished task of building canal network of the Sardar Sarovar Project …
The Centre is expected to release a first instalment of about `700 crores assistance for drought relief works in Maharashtra in the next few days. Union ministers Mr Pranab Mukherjee, Mr Sharad Pawar, Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal and the deputy chairman planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia are expected to meet …
The UN warns that a million children in Africa's Sahel region face malnutrition due to drought in region. In all 15 million people face food insecurity in eight nations across the Sahel, a region that is still recovering from drought and a food crisis of 2010. Un some countries the …
The Government on Tuesday assured all “possible” help to drought-hit States, but ruled out any change in norms till 2015 for providing relief, rejecting demands for higher compensation by various Rajya Sabha members. Cutting across political lines, members raised the issue of severe drought in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. …
The Rajya Sabha discussed the severe drought situation in Karnataka and in States such as Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Replying to a motion to call the attention of the Government to the issue, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Harish Rawat, said the Government is trying to monitor the …
With little assistance forthcoming, 41 of them have been threatening to push for merger with Karnataka Malabai Solankar has been waiting since 6 a.m. on Saturday to collect fodder at a makeshift depot in Sordi village in Sangli's Jath taluka. Now well past noon, she is struggling to not to …
Water woes for Bangaloreans will continue with fresh government data demonstrating that the current level of water supply in India's IT capital is almost four thousand million cubic metre short of the requirement, exposing 22 lakh people to water scarcity every year. Every drop countsThe shortfall is in the prevailing …
The government would bring out a white paper on irrigation projects in the past 10 years, said chief minister Prithviraj Chavan at a symposium on Maharashtra, Past, Present and Future, organized on the birth centenary of former chief minister Yashwantrao Chavan at Vidhan Bhavan on Friday. Chavan said irrigation projects …
Sounding an alarm bell, Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan on Friday warned of a severe water crisis if the state government failed to complete the pending and on-going irrigation projects on schedule. Expressing serious concern over the prevailing drought situation in several pockets of Maharashtra, the governor said many irrigation projects …
At a time when the State is reeling under severe drought conditions, about 4,000 cusecs of water gets wasted everyday at the Basavasagara reservoir in Narayanapura due to the lack of maintenance of the reservoir. The reservoir, which helps irrigate 10 lakh acres of land, has an inflow of about …
The koala has been listed as a threatened species in parts of Australia due to its shrinking population, according to officials. One of Australia's most iconic marsupials, the koala is facing a range of threats, including habitat loss, urban expansion, dog attacks, vehicle collisions and disease. Its specialised diet of …
Plants are flowering faster than scientists predicted in response to climate change, research in the United States showed on Wednesday, which could have devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems. Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some …
In flood-hit fields in the Philippines, farmers are testing a hardy new variety of rice that can survive completely submerged for more than two weeks. In Kenya's Kibera slum, poor urban families are turning around their diets and incomes just by learning to grow vegetables in sack gardens outside their …
An all-party delegation headed by the Karnataka Chief Minister, Mr D.V. Sadananda Gowda, today met the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, seeking an immediate interim relief of Rs 1,500 crore to deal with drought in 24 districts of the state. The Finance Minister has assured the delegation that he would …
