For South Asian Policy-Makers, Climate Migrants Still Invisible

Flash floods carried away everything except the clothes on their backs. Villagers take emergency food in plastic bags in a coastal village in India’s eastern state Odisha. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS NEW DELHI, Dec 13...

‘This forest is like an old friend’ – India’s tribal women fight for land ownership

A group of women’s efforts to save a forest has been so successful it’s becoming the template for forests across the state RANAPUR, India, Oct 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – For the tribal women...

Q&A: Land Degradation Could Force 135 Million to Migrate in Next 30 Years

NEW DELHI/BONN, Oct 18 2016 (IPS) – One of the critical challenges facing the world today is that emerging migration patterns are increasingly rooted in the depletion of natural resources. Entire populations are being...

India’s most flood-prone state Bihar aided by new satellite mapping

BHUBANESWAR, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Every year Bihar is deluged by floods that submerge roads, destroy homes and wash away crops, leaving the disaster management authority struggling to monitor and assess the damage,...

Microsensor-Fitted Locust Swarms? Sci-fi Meets Conservation

NEW DELHI, Sep 19 2016 (IPS) – Every November, India’s Gahirmatha beach in the Indian Ocean region develops a brownish-grey rash for 60 to 80 days. Half-a-million female Olive Ridley turtles emerge out of...

Water Scarcity Could Impact West Asian Credit Ratings

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 9 2016 (IPS) – Water scarcity, conflict and refugee exodus is the strongest megatrend in West Asia, indicating the status of current trends and how these factors may shape the future,...

Q&A: Crisis and Climate Change Driving Unprecedented Migration

Manipadma Jena interviews the director general of the International Organization for Migration, WILLIAM LACY SWING NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 6 2016 (IPS) – Climate change is now adding new layers of complexity to the nexus...

Climate warming increases aflatoxin levels in crops

Farmers in South Asia are largely unaware that aflatoxin, a liver cancer-causing agent produced by fungi, accumulates on crops like maize, sorghum, coffee and groundnut as a result of stress from prolonged...

U.N. expert calls for India to ramp up action to help slum dwellers

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India’s ambitious target to build 20 million new homes for the nation’s poor is failing slum dwellers and those living on the city’s streets, Leilani Farha, the United...

Not So Smart Idea

BHUBANESWAR, India, Apr 14 2016 (IPS) – As Bhubaneswar experiences scorching heat of 43.2 degrees Celsius in early April, 5 degrees above normal, 44-year-old Prasanti Behera barely sleeps at night. Two summers ago, a...