South Asia ranks high on climate risk index

 A global report ranks India, the world’s second most populous country, at the 10th position among countries in Asia at climate risk, based on the impact of extreme environmental events documented from...

Marine Litter: Plunging Deep, Spreading Wide

ATHENS, Oct 10 2014 (IPS) – Imagine a black-footed albatross feeding its chick plastic pellets, a baby seal in the North Pole helplessly struggling with an open-ended plastic bag wrapped tight around its neck,...

Facing Storms Without the Mangrove Wall

ATHENS, Oct 15 2014 (IPS) – As the cyclonic storm Hudhud ripped through India’s eastern state of Andhra Pradesh, home to two million people, at a land speed of over 190 kilometres per hour...

Look Who’s Helping Olive Ridley

GANJAM, India, Mar 27 2014 (IPS) – When Olive Ridley sea turtles nest on the beach in his village, little Warthy Raju can barely wait for the millions of hatchlings, with their three-inch shells...

U.N. Pushes Climate-Smart Agriculture – But Are the Farmers Willing to Change?

KARNAL, India, Sep 17 2014 (IPS) – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to make a strong pitch to world political leaders at the U.N. Climate Summit in New York on Sep. 23...

Can Land Rights and Education Save an Ancient Indian Tribe?

MALKANGIRI, India, Aug 19 2014 (IPS) – Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India’s eastern Odisha...

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...

Tribal Farmers Fall Back on Ancient Wisdom

KORAPUT, India, Jan 29 2013 (IPS) – 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...

Q&A: ‘Mismatch Between Commitments and Action on Biodiversity’

Manipadma Jena interviews BRAULIO FERREIRA DE SOUZA DIAS, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity BHUBANESWAR, India, Oct 4 2012 (IPS) – The eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the...

‘Urban Planning Must Factor in Biodiversity’

HYDERABAD, India, Oct 19 2012 (IPS) –  “With more than 60 percent of the world projected to be urban by 2030 why not prepare for it and build cities that include biodiversity preservation into...