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 …
With the delayed monsoons and the threat of drought looming large over India, K 81kram Singh's first independent feature film, Tarpan, was premiered in July at the most appropriate time. Singh uses tarpan - the practice of offering water to the dead ancestors - as a metaphor to relate how …
AT least 2 million tonnes of loss of rice production is feared in Bangladesh during the current kharif-1 -- a drought which has left small rivers, mostly canals, creeks and ponds dry and rendered hundreds of thousands of pumps used for lifting ground water for irrigation and drinking, dry because …
A long summer of discontent seems to be in store for residents of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. Last year, the city's Simly Dam reservoir had dropped to a record low level because of a prolonged drought. Despite recent rains, water tankers are still visible on the streets of the city's 22 …
Zimbabwe is gearing up for a bone dry period ahead. A so-called rainy season actually left the country high and dry, and turned out to be drier than the great drought of 1992. And the department ofwater has let out the alarming news that the country's dams are on the …
You can't tilt against these windmills. A good wind has literally swept into the lives of the inhabitants of Chile's Coquimbo region as 31 windmills have been set spinning to pump water. Some of the ranchers in this drought-stricken area spend more than 8 hours a day drawing up the …
Australia is in the grip of a severe drought. Recently, food production has decreased sharply, prices have soared and there has been water shortages and Flowering in concrete jungles bush fires in the eastern parts of the country. The state of agricultural production looks dim for the country. According to …
The Japanese must learn to consume less water or they might soon have to do without it altogether. This is the warning has been issued by the National Land Agency in Japan. Following an unusually dry monsoon the Land of the Rising Sun is reeling under what is being described …
Scientists trying to accurately forecast droughts in Zimbabwe have found that the country's maize production is more dependent on El Nino -- a warm water current that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and causes climate variability in the tropics and the sub-tropics -- than it is on rainfall (Nature, Vol …
ETHIOPIA, one of the oldest of farm civilisations, has been mercilessly ravaged by war and famine. Fortunately, Valiant & Khan's Treasures of Ethiopia spares the viewer the stereotypical images of hollow-eyed children and food convoys. Instead, it wanders into the countryside to look at its plant treasures. Covering about a …
Tanzanian farmers need no longer flee to the cities in search of greener pastures. The spectre of mass migration from rural areas has been haunting the nation ever since it was hit by a severe crop failure early this year due to drought in its northern highlands and the late …
FRUIT and vegetable farmers in California, USA, are experiencing one of the driest seasons of the century, not because of paltry rains but due to a shortsighted official policy. A new ruling has reined back billions of gallons of water in rivers and streams to protect the dwindling supply of …
THE AKKADIAN empire flourished on the banks of Euphrates in Iraq, from 2300 BC to 2200 BC. Though the reason for its sudden collapse has long puzzled archaeologists, Harvey Weiss and his colleagues at Yale University in USA now say it literally dried up and withered away. The archaeologists base …
In 1977, the UN organised a conference on desertification in which a resolution was passed to start a fund for desertification control. Besides, UNEP also started a desertification programme, but most industrialised countries showed no interest in this. Do you think there has been a change in their perception? It's …
While the cultivation of paddy in Punjab (and Haryana) does need some curbing, the extreme forebodings of either total groundwater exhaustion in Punjab or of the state turning into a desert of paddy growing is not curbed forthwith are unwarranted.
EVEN AS the midwestern states in USA are awash with flood waters, farmers in the southeast are contending with a severe drought and face agricultural losses that have already hit $800 million in the Carolinas and Georgia. US department of agriculture authorities say the worst-hit crops in the tri-state area, …
IN THE treeless, barren and rocky district of Kutch in Gujarat, the Shree Vivakanand Research and Training Institute (VRTI), or the sanstha as it is known locally, has carved a name for itself in drought relief and ecological regeneration activity. The Kutch region, which is named so because its topography …
BUGS IN one's body usually mean aches and pains, but researchers studying how some bacteria exist safely in the large intestine of humans by adapting to water-scarce conditions, may come up with clues to new varieties of drought-resistant crops that could flourish in arid regions. J Gowrishankar and his research …
KHEJRI (Prosopis cineraria) is nature's best gift to the farmers of Rajasthan and Haryana for it not only thrives in drought conditions and in poor soils, but also encourages the growth of crops planted near it if its lateral roots are pruned (Changing Villages, Vol 12, No 1). Scientists at …
PEOPLE in Orissa's famine-hit regions are desperately selling their children -- not for the money but to ensure two square meals a day for them. So far, 16 cases of children being sold have been exposed in the local media, but the state government is yet to admit even one. …
BESET by famine and drought, large sections of Orissa and Bihar are beginning to mirror the stark images of hunger in Somalia and Sudan. In Orissa, more than 10 million people -- the majority of whom are tribals -- are reeling under a famine. In tribal-dominated south Bihar, too, more …
