Biodiversity

Featured Articles
December 4, 2022 What is the status of inland fisheries in India? Read these situational analysis reports to know about inland fisheries, the life of the fisherfolk, governance and tenure in inland fisheries and threats to the sustainability of inland fisheries.
Fishing in an irrigation canal in Kerala (Image Source: Martin Pilkinton via Wikimedia Commons)
August 2, 2022 The frequency and intensity of floods is on the rise in Assam spelling doom for fish biodiversity.
Life during floods in Assam (Image Source: Kausika Bordoloi via Wikimedia Commons)
June 27, 2022 Heavy metal pollution is poisoning the East Kolkata wetlands, affecting fish and posing a threat to the health of humans who depend on this fish for their food. Urgent action is needed!
Fishermen use wastewater in Kolkata to rear fish (Image Source: India Water Portal)
June 15, 2022 The River Front Development project planned by the PMC is nothing but a cosmetic makeover for the already choked Mula Mutha river in Pune, argues Dr Gurudas Nulkar while speaking to the India Water Portal.
The highly polluted and encroached Mula Mutha river in Pune (Image: Alexey Komarov via Wikimedia Commons)
June 4, 2022 Freshwater ecosystems in India are in peril. We invite comments on this vision document by TNC-India, FES and Ooloi labs that highlights future actions needed to save them.
Freshwater ecosystems, in peril! (Image Source: The Nature Conservancy, India)
May 10, 2022 Freshwater ecosystems are not mere sources of water, they are treasure troves of biodiversity. Know more about the fascinating and diverse animal species that inhabit freshwater habitats in India.
Freshwater ecosystems, treasure troves of biodiversity (Image Source: India Water Portal)
Small scale fishworkers fishing for jobs elsewhere
Fishers livelihoods are being directly threatened by mechanised fishing methods and ecologically destructive fishing practices. Posted on 19 Mar, 2016 01:31 PM

Chinna, 35, harvests fish and is engaged on a piece rate basis by the local contractor who has rights to fishing in the village tank in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh. At times, Chinna also uses family labour to complete his work.

Traditional fishers livelihoods are directly threatened by mechanised fishing methods (Source: Vikas Sahayog Kendra, Palamau)
One river, two names and a 14-year-long dispute
Goa and Karnataka have been fighting over the Mhadei since 2002. How does this affect the extensive cooperation expected from the states for the interlinking plan? Posted on 10 Mar, 2016 07:09 PM

The Mandovi river is picture perfect. She is the wide, placid river fringed by the coconut palms and dotted by the boats that we think of when we think of Goa.

The serene Mandovi is the focus of a bitter dispute between Karnataka and Goa
World Culture Festival poses threat to the Yamuna
News this week Posted on 07 Mar, 2016 10:11 PM

Activists oppose Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's World Culture Festival along the Yamuna flood plains

Yamuna river in New Delhi (Source: IWP Flickr Photos)
Jharkhand's octogenarian water warrior
Simon Oraon, leading a people’s movement to save water and forests in Ranchi, Jharkhand Posted on 28 Feb, 2016 01:39 PM

It was 1961. Simon Oraon, a Class IV school drop-out began his journey against drought in Bedo, a tribal block of Ranchi, Jharkhand. An idealistic young man, he along with his fellow villagers began constructing earthen dams to capture rainwater for recharging groundwater.

A water body revived at Bedo, Ranchi
Saved by tanks: The story of Puducherry’s Bahour commune
While the monster floods of 2015 mercilessly gobbled up villages along the coast of Tamil Nadu, settlements in neighbouring Puducherry managed to escape the fury. Miracle, you say? Posted on 16 Feb, 2016 10:13 AM

The East Coast of India is very much unlike its western counterpart both in terms of physiography and climatology.

The Manapet tank in Bahour has an ayacut of around 110 acres, most of which is now urbanised (Image: Seetha Gopalakrishnan, IWP)
Unnatural world: National parks and climate change
Poachers, citizens and sometimes animals themselves are threats to the parks but the biggest new threat is climate change. Do our national parks stand a chance of surviving it? Posted on 01 Feb, 2016 03:39 PM

Forest guards in India have fought many things over time in the course of their daily work--poachers, irate citizens, even animals at times! But they are now facing a threat that may well be beyond their capacity to overcome. A threat that is not just responsible for the death of individual animals, but for the destruction of entire groups of species--climate change.

A herd of elephants cross the Ramganga river at Corbett National Park
Ken-Betwa river gets some respite
Statutory clearance not given for the much touted Ken-Betwa model link project of the Interlinking of Rivers programme due to extreme social and environmental concerns. Posted on 08 Jan, 2016 01:03 PM

In December 2015, more than forty years after it was conceived, the Government was set to launch India’s ambitious 30-link river interlinking project linking 37 rivers.

View of Betwa river (Source: Manual Menal, Wikimedia Commons)
Choppy waters and a calm river voyager
Emmanuel Theophilus was awarded the ' Bhagirath Prayas Samman' at the India Rivers Day 2015 for his valiant and untiring effort to safeguard the integrity of the Mahakali River. Posted on 06 Dec, 2015 12:31 PM

The epic voyage--Nadisutra--along the Ganga may have been the high point of Emmanuel Theophilus’s recent work, but there have been many more peaks and valleys for this fervent mountaineer cum ecologist. Theo lives in a remote village near Munsiyari in Uttarakhand.

Theophilus being awarded the ' Bhagirath Prayas Samman' (Source: Kush Sethi)
Springs are more than just a source of water for humans
Springs exist in the most biodiverse regions of the country and anchor entire ecosystems. That fact must be respected while undertaking springs conservation work. Posted on 02 Dec, 2015 09:04 PM

"If you do good work on the ground, policy will happen", says Himanshu Kulkarni of ACWADAM. This has proven to be in true at least in the case of springs.

Springs not only provide humans with water but anchor entire ecosystems.
New CGWA guidelines mandate NOC for industries to extract groundwater
Policy matters this week Posted on 24 Nov, 2015 05:45 PM

Industries can extract groundwater only after obtaining a NOC: CGWA

Groundwater, a scarce resource (Source: IWP Flickr Photos)
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