Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Jagan Prasad Tehriya Vs State of Uttar Pradesh dated 23/05/2025. The applicant has alleged large-scale illegal felling of green trees within the Agra district, Uttar Pradesh. The application revealed instances of illegal tree felling at Fatehabad, Sadar, Kiraoli and Agra …
Ever since the well-known environmentalist P R Mishra stepped into Sukhomairi to transform its barren landscape in the early 70s, Jethu Ram has been thinking of water and trees. He was among the few villagers who first volunteered to work for soil and water conservation after being convinced by Mishra. …
JETHU RAM looks jaded and tired. But at the ripe old age of 87, he is definitely not a man out of sync with the times. In fact he is far ahead of the times.Twenty-five years ago when his village Sukhomajri, in Haryana"s Punchkula district, had neither water nor trees …
IT HAD been raining incessantly. On the third day, amid the dankness, everyone heard a roar. Some thought it was the sound of helicopters that had come to evacuate them. Only a few saw a gigantic moving wall of mud rear up into the sky. Before they could react, a …
• Hurricane Mitch dumped as much as 65 cm of rainfall in a single day. • Thousands of landmines, laid during the nations' civil wars, have been scattered all over by floods and mudslides. • Honduras faces the task of rebuilding 94 bridges; 90 per cent of its roads, bridges …
CAN YOU imagine a self-sufficient village that meets it energy, fertiliser, pesticide and food requirements on its own? And all these from cow dung? The answer may be yes, if cow dung is used to its full potential. Its utility ranges from powering a bulb to repelling pests. It is …
THOUGH the world focuses only on one form of poverty that is financial there are two other forms - ecological poverty and povert of the mind or mental poverty - that are even more relevant for the rural poor for they are closely associated with the state of the environment. …
WELCOME to Sakwa, a small tribal village in Valia taluka in Gujarat's Bharuch district. The population comprises some 473 persons living in 88 houses. And there are about 179 cattleheads: 83 cows, 24 buffaloes and 72 bullocks. In 1988, when the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme-India (AKRSP-I), a nongovernmental organisation …
Compelling evidence has been found that the Peruvian government health workers used threats, physical coercion, misinformation and promises of food to meet sterilisation quotas among the poor, rural and illiterate women. The issue has rocked the nation and caused an international outcry. At least 15 women undergoing sterilisations have died …
RALEGAN SIDDHI. An enviable example of what human will and dedication can achieve against staggering odds. When Anna Hazare, then a jeep driver serving the Indian army, visited this drought-stricken village in Maharashtra"s Ambedkar district, the people here did not know what development meant. But now, they can probably teach …
The Responsible Ecological Social Tour (REST) programme, which was launched a year ago, is coming under heavy criticism from environmentalists. The programme was launched in a cluster of villages near the Pra Chang mountain in northern Thailand's Phayao province for the purpose of ecotourism. Officials at non-government organisations running the …
Rainwater harvesting started in the country in 1989 as a part of an income-generating programme assisted by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Under the programme, some 500 storage tanks with capacities between two cubic metre (m3) and 10 m3 were built in the Capiz Province. The project involved building …
Rooftop catchments and cisterns have met the water needs of many small Caribbean islands for over three centuries. More than 500,000 people depend on such systems of water storage. In Saint Lucia, storage systems include 200-litre steel drums, large polyethylene plastic tanks with a capacity of 1,300*2,300 litres, and underground …
Thailand is one of the world's leading rainwater harvesting nations. The National Jar Programme was launched to supply clean drinking water to rural areas under the United Nations Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990). It was aimed at catching rainwater in jars. Since the programme was started, there has been …
Captured rainwater has regenerated degraded lands in Kenya. Eroded grazing areas have been rejuvenated by building mini-catchments using a 'pitting and ridging technique' known as katumani. This is accompanied by re-seeding of native grasses and legumes. Pits are dug at the top of an eroded slope below a cut-off drain, …
Builder R Jeyakumar's technique is simple and cost-effective. The areas surrounding building complexes in Chennai are cemented. The rain water is allowed to flow on to the road. The first step, says Jeyakumar, is to prevent this run-off by two to three-inch-high kerbs near the gates. To collect the run-off, …
At Besant Nagar, Chennai, each Sunday morning sees a middle-aged man on a door-to-door campaign distributing pamphlets and talking spiritedly. Meet Sekhar Raghavan, a lone warrior fighting for a cause. Even at 50 and a PhD in physics, he painstakingly explains the merits of rainwater harvesting (RWH) to anyone witling …
Exnora international, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), is involved mainly in solid-waste management and sorting out rural problems. Recently, however, they have entered the field of rainwater harvesting (RWH), propagating water harvesting methods and offering technical support. The NGO has atso succeeded in motivating the villagers of Kovalam, near Chennai, to …
The summer of 1998 was a wet one. Danes fled to the warmer latitudes to get some sun in their holidays. While they were away, the rain, though unsuitable for sunbathing, was collected in pots, pans, barrels and large storage tanks. Collected to help conserve dwindling drinking water resources. In …
An innocent face bereft of expression. Inscrutable eyes. Stocky build. His appearance can be deceptive. So is the simplicity of his thought. Almost unreal. Meet Chewang Norphel, 62, retired civil engineer. He makes zings (tanks). And artificial glaciers. There is hardly anything about him that seems unusual. It takes some …
