Affidavit on behalf of Union Territory of Puducherry in the matter of a news item titled "India lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 Global Forest Watch" which appeared in the Indian Express, April 13, 2024. The report dated April 25, 2025 said that there is no loss …
The 2012 Sri Lanka human development report examines the social and economic disparities across Sri Lanka’s geographic regions. It also highlights development differences amongst provinces and districts to the extent that data are available, focusing in particular on spatial disparities. It assesses the health, education, employment and governance sectors, and …
Forests provide multiple benefits to the society, which are both direct and indirect. A study was conducted in Dehradun and Tehri districts to quantify and assess the economic value of various provisioning services which local people derive from the forest to meet their day to day requirement.
The premise of this paper is that, despite the existence of a well-established regulatory framework to enforce environmental laws and policies in each state of India, there has been a variation in the implementation of environmental judgments. This paper argues that an independent and proactive Court-appointed monitoring committee, namely the …
New Delhi: The government will have to secure the nod of two-thirds of landowners to acquire a patch of land for private/PPP projects while acquisition in tribal areas would be possible only with the approval of local institutions of self-governance. The enshrining of owners’ willingness to sell land forms a …
The new “investor-friendly” version of the controversial land Bill was today cleared by a group of ministers led by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. The consent of two-thirds of landowners would now be required for acquiring land for public-private-partnership (PPP) and private projects. According to sources, the revised version had no …
India’s indigenous Adivasi tribes are among the most disadvantaged people south of the Himalayan mountains. To improve their lot, some have begun to set up community-based organisations.
With the Convention on Biological Diversity's 11th Conference of the Parties to take place in Hyderabad, this article points out that the treaty's implementation the world over has lacked resolve. India is no exception, with a great gap between the impression given by reports and the reality on the ground.
A village council in the remote northeastern state of Nagaland has offered a template of investment that can be replicated by financial institutions and banks throughout the hilly and rural regions to harness the renewable energy potential of an area
This paper highlights the role of community prevention in improving overall health and in supporting health equity. By addressing the underlying causes of illness and injury, community prevention efforts can prevent illness and injury before they occur. The paper presents three frameworks that support quality community prevention efforts.
This paper discusses the political circumstances which help explain why the insanitary living conditions of such a large section of India’s urban population have been ignored, and contrasts these with the circumstances which explain successful sanitary reform in Britain in the second half of the 19th century. In India, there …
“Science-based” standards are an integral part of modern regulatory systems. Studies on “public understanding of science” mostly focus on high technology areas in advanced economies. In contrast, the present study analyses the public understanding of regulation in the context of standard-setting for bottled water quality in India. Using primary data, …
Visits to seven small towns in north India reveal how paucity of funds, slipshod planning and a dearth of capabilities have contributed to poor civic services and inadequate infrastructure. Citizens in some areas have organised themselves into neighbourhood committees to tackle problems that the urban bodies neglect, but this has …
A Consumer movement is catching on in Nepal.Communities are extending the grid to villages.This threatens to undo the effort put in small-scale off-grid power generation to fight poverty. How can Nepal harmonize the two initiatives ? Read More - http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/when-villages-plug
The large dams being built on the rivers of the eastern Himalayas have become highly controversial. The hydropower that north-east India is expected to produce is meant almost entirely for use elsewhere. That these dams will be exclusively hydropower and not multipurpose dams and that there will be a great …
Utilising the modern social network theory, the present descriptive article has examined the art of urbanites’ ‘bowling alone’ in concrete jungles and its negative effect on their social and civic life. Mainly, such a process has resulted in the formation of ‘urban tribes’ characterized by their isolation from the mainstream …
When India and other nations convened the U.N. Conference at Stockholm in June, 1972, it marked a new epoch in international concern for the environment. India was among those nations representing to the call for a cleaner environment. However, India's environment has improved very slowly since 1972. In this article, …
The spatial and temporal variability experienced in the weather conditions of a local area as well as the landmass on which they act makes the overall system highly dynamic and therefore complex to understand in terms of its water resources. Watershed management philosophy offers a great deal in handling these …
The overall objective of the Environmental Report Card is to explore citizens’ perspectives on the environment of Bangalore and assess the gap between perceptions and actions by government. In specific terms, objectives of the study are four-fold: Assess the perceptions of the citizens of Bangalore with regard to the key …
