Sustainability

The last few months have seen much debate and discussion on the fast approaching Day Zero, with claims that taps in 21 major Indian cities will dry up.

Supreme Court question authorities on why manual scavenging still prevails

In 2014, the Government of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) to accelerate efforts in achieving universal sanitation coverage. The issue of access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities also became a major Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-6) when the United Nation set 17 global goals in 2015 under the 2030 Agenda.

Spatial and temporal information of agriculture, forest, topography, land use change, climate and socio-economic factors are very useful in the planning and implementation of Natural Resource Management (NRM) programs.

Choked by sewage and effluent discharge, lakes in and around Indore are in a terrible state and in need of restoration. A bustling city in central India, Indore was declared the cleanest city in India three years in a row.

While enhanced irrigation coverage has been hailed as an important way to improve agricultural productivity, it continues to lag behind in India and agriculture continues to be rainfed, subject to the vagaries of the monsoon.

Arecanut is generally grown in the Malnad area of Karnataka, which receives high rainfall. However, it is also grown in dry land areas of Tumkur district, also in Karnataka, using groundwater.

While most parts of the country are facing a water crisis, here’s a case from the arid state of Rajasthan, where decentralized initiatives are solving water issues. Dungarpur in southern Rajasthan has exemplified how community participation with local level planning processes are working towards improving rainwater harvesting and recharge of groundwater.

NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s policy think tank, recently released the second edition of the Composite Water Management Index to enable effective water management in Indian states. It warns that the country will lose 6% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2050 because of a water crisis.

Greater Noida, September 5 (India Science Wire): Degradation of land, which leads to the process of desertification, is not limited to arid and semi-arid areas but is also visible in high altitude regions that get very little rainfall and are known as cold deserts.