Watered down: Almost half of India’s rivers still remain polluted; here is why
India has mostly focussed on cleaning only major rivers; most states have recently started reviving their small rivers, but the progress remains …
UN 2023 Water Conference: I am hopeful Great Salt Lake won’t go the Aral Sea and Lake Urmia way, says Kevin Perry
Down To Earth speaks to Kevin Perry from the University of Utah on the Great Salt Lake in the American West
Water insecurity hits sub-Saharan Africa hard: Report
People with lower levels of income and those residing on the outskirts of cities are more prone to water insecurity
In the name of development: How Nashik’s Goda Ghat juggled concretisation & de-concretisation over 2 decades
Recurring urban floods exposed how thoughtless development projects have renedered the area vulnerable
Gandhian Sanitation: Flood-prone Sahibganj uses height and bacteria to manage its waste
Flood-prone blocks of Sahibganj in Jharkhand use biodigester toilets; these comprise a series of concrete tanks that contain sheets with an …
World Rivers Day: Adopt bottom-up approach, says student who cleaned Vadodara stream
Down To Earth talks to Sneha Shahi about the issues facing Indian rivers and her own experience of working with two of them
At least 26 of India’s 123 reservoirs are full: Central Water Commission
Storage at major river basins was normal, with Narmada, Sabarmati, Krishna and Cauvery basins having storage above 90%
75 years of people’s power: How these two villages in Chhattisgarh solved their grey water problem
Ghugwa and Patora villages in Durg district used household- and community-level soak pits to prevent waterlogging
Parched Haryana: In Gothra and Khanpur Khurd, salinity, recharge issues and extraction have spelt doom
As rainfall decreases over Charkhi Dadri and Jhajjar districts in Haryana, villages are digging deeper for water and repeating a vicious cycle
Chalk streams: why ‘England’s rainforests’ are so rare and precious
England’s chalk streams support a wide variety of biodiversity; but anthropogenic pressures are destroying these icons of English culture
Land, water resources are at breaking point: Report
Pressure on land and water systems compromising agricultural productivity, food security
Oxygen parks, protected grasslands: A small Maharashtra village’s efforts in environmental conservation
The efforts of the villagers are driven by a common goal of leaving behind a healthy home for posterity
Protest against water diversion project near Bhitarkanika turns violent
Villagers marched to Bharigada village near Odisha’s Bhitarkanika National Park and ransacked the site of a project to divert water from a …
World Water Day: Fish from common ponds help fund weddings in this Maharashtra village
The small village got ownership and management rights of the three village ponds in 2011, 70 years after its independence
How an environmental engineer used faecal sludge management to make his Telangana town clean
Faecal sludge and septage management could be an opportunity to re-consider future strategies regarding treatment of faecal waste
No plan to desilt Kosi: Bihar govt
There is no technique to desilt the Kosi, Bihar water resources minister told the assembly on March 4, 2020
ODF status will mean nothing without faecal sludge & septage management
With faecal sludge treatment still in nascent stage in India, toilets will add to the load of untreated sewage being disposed in water bodies
Everyone loves an overflowing dam
Even as the government raced to fill up the reservoir of the Sardar Sarovar Dam by September 15 (one-and-a-half months ahead of the schedule as …
New membrane to help remove oil, dyes from industrial waste water
The membrane, developed by team from IIT-G, using graphene oxide, cotton fibre and dopamine removed around 98 per cent of oil from the water
India has 20 river basins, all over-exploited
Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from overexploitation
As temperatures continue to rise, birds struggle to survive
Record-breaking temperatures reduce bird population and are behind absence of insectivorous birds
Yamuna highly polluted in many stretches beyond Delhi too
Scientists monitored the river’s pollution load at 12 points from Poanta in Himachal Pradesh to Pratappur in Uttar Pradesh
Hydropower dams can harm coastal areas far downstream
A study in Mexico on four rivers finds that damming rivers has measurable negative ecologic and economic effects on coastal regions more …
All that crap: How can faecal sludge be reused
If more people in India’s rural areas are building septic tanks, there must be effective ways of managing faecal sludge. Here are some ways …
Look at disasters from a broader perspective, urges new report
It analyses past trends and says India has to be prepared for catastrophes even if they are not defined as natural disasters