Why Asri Hikakka may go back to studying by the kerosene lamp

RAYAGADA, India, 15 September 2013- Eight months each of the eleven Kondh tribal households in Balinaikaguda forest village got two 9-watt compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and one solar street lamp. After this, all of...

Traditional Farming Holds All the Aces

KORAPUT, India, Feb 1 2013 (IPS) – Last monsoon season, 65-year-old Sunadhar Ramaparia, a member of the Bhumia tribe in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, mixed indigenous crops like ‘para’ paddy, foxtail millet and...

India Strives to Become ‘Drought Proof’

HYDERABAD, India, Mar 12 2013 (IPS) – In a country of 1.2 billion people, the threat of drought takes on epic proportions. Over a period of two centuries (between 1801 and 2002), India experienced 42...

Tribal Farmers Fall Back on Ancient Wisdom

While tens of thousands of Indian farmers succumb to the pressures of debt, hunger and poverty by taking their own lives, members of the Bhumia tribe are simply falling back on a 3,000-year-old agricultural...

INDIA: Climate Change Fuels Rural Out-Migration, Rising Farm Debt

BHUBANESWAR, India, Nov 30 2009 (IPS) – Under a shed made of bamboo and corrugated sheet metal, Purusottam Sur feeds his two bullocks and a cow with a bundle each of dry paddy plant. A...

INDIA: ‘Seed-Mothers’ Confront Climate Insecurity

BHUBANESWAR, India, Jul 1 2011 (IPS) – In eastern Orissa state’s tribal hinterlands about 200 ‘seed-mothers’ are on mission mode – identifying, collecting and conserving traditional seed varieties and motivating farming families to use them....

Tribal Farming Beats Climate Change

RAYAGADA, India, Apr 27 2012 (IPS) – Tribal farmer Harish Saraka has rediscovered the key to sustainable farming in this rain-dependent hinterland of eastern Odisha state – mixed cropping. Saraka, 38, is careful not to...

Climate Change Threatens the Poor in Cities

BANGKOK, Mar 27 2012 (IPS) – India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by...

Land ownership boosts climate resilience in India

GANJAM, India (AlertNet) – Efforts to secure land ownership for tribal people in one of India’s poorest states are bolstering their economic security in the face of climate-induced hardships, and helping conserve farmland and...

Can ‘Blue Forests’ Mitigate Climate Change?

YEOSU, South Korea, May 21 2012 (IPS) – Fifty-five percent of global atmospheric carbon captured by living organisms happens in the ocean. Between 50-71 percent of this is captured by the ocean’s vegetated “blue carbon”...