Environment

Global forest cover losses rise despite lockdown

Global forest cover losses rise despite lockdown

April 8, 2021

The year 2020 saw a 12 pc rise in the area of tree cover lost which rose to 12.2 million hectares, says the Global Forest Watch in its report for the year. The report goes on to say that about 4.2 million hectares or a landmass equivalent to the Netherlands of virgin primary fore...

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International Day of Forests 2021

International Day of Forests 2021

March 22, 2021

Forests all over the world face existential threat as logging and forest fires regularly claim millions of hectares of forests Though large parts of India have so far remained free of any major forest fires, except in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal, the threat t...

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Water, Water Everywhere. But where exactly? Treasure hunt for water begins

Water, Water Everywhere. But where exactly? Treasu...

March 22, 2021

Yes, there is water everywhere. We all know that 70 pc of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. But for a glass of water, every second a woman in rural India walks an average of 173 kilometres – the distance between New Delhi and Kurukshetra– to fetch potable water in ...

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Air Pollution: India again tops dubious global list

Air Pollution: India again tops dubious global lis...

March 19, 2021

The latest index of air pollution around the world again puts an uncomplimentary spotlight on South Asia, notably India as the country has 9 of the 10 as well as 35 of the 50 most polluted cities in the world. China, by comparison, has only 7, while Pakistan 5 and Bangladesh has ...

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Crimes increasing, cases piling up: State of India’s environment

Crimes increasing, cases piling up: State of India...

March 10, 2021

Soon after the release of State of Indian Environment, 2021, a report about the current state of the environment in India, public interest litigation was filed in the Supreme Court asking the top court to issue directions for urgently filling up of large-scale vacancies that have...

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Covid-19 increases hazards of biomedical waste

Covid-19 increases hazards of biomedical waste

March 1, 2021

Even though the world seems to have begun a pushback against the Covid-19 pandemic with the launch of intensive vaccination drives in several countries, the battle is far from won. And even when humanity conquers the virus, which it must and will, the pandemic would have left sev...

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Circular economy goes around in circles

Circular economy goes around in circles

February 27, 2021

Every decade or so, roughly, corporate boardrooms come up with new buzzwords that are meant to define not just how the world would evolve and what the world needs, but also, more crucially how they are becoming or already have become very responsible corporate citizens despite al...

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World Wetlands Day: Construction equals destruction

World Wetlands Day: Construction equals destructio...

February 8, 2021

Mumbai Coastal Road and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. Two of the most high-profile and highly controversial projects in Mumbai have one thing in common, besides extra-large budgets. Both pose severe threat to the bustling metropolis’ once thriving wetlands, which are now f...

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Plastic poison spreads unchecked

Plastic poison spreads unchecked

January 19, 2021

For the third year in a row, a survey by anti-plastics NGOs has found that Coca-Cola is the top global plastic polluter, while others in the top 10 include equally famous names such as PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever, Mondelez International and Procter & Gamble. Though many of the...

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Major health risks due to untreated sewage disposal

Major health risks due to untreated sewage disposa...

January 13, 2021

India produces close to two million tonnes of faecal waste every day and the urban areas alone, accounting for just over a third of the total population of the country, generate over 62,000 million litres of sewage daily. Of this, over 60 pc or close to 38,000 million litres is d...

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