Tag Archives: Environment

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Paris is in focus again as the climate change talks take centre stage. All over the world, people are watching and waiting, pinning their hopes on these talks, praying desperately that something useful, something good will come out of it all, despite the cynics. At a local level, where I live in India, the subject ...

[The Conversation] More than a billion tonnes of potentially toxic, bleach-like waste is produced and piled in landfills every year, with often devastating effects. And yet most people haven’t even heard of these “alkaline wastes”. We want to change this. Our research has identified nearly two billion tonnes of alkaline residues that are produced in the world each year, most ...

[By Fernanda Dobal ] Last month I went on safari. It was a trip I had wanted to take for as long as I can remember. I left New York bubbling with excitement, and after 24+ hours of travel, I arrived at a beautiful South African reserve. Each day, we would wake up before the sun and drive into the ...

By Gisele Bündchen New York (Women’s Feature Service) – Did you know how big an impact a simple wood-burning stove can have on a woman’s life? Stoves produce toxic smoke that harms the environment as well as human health. In fact, more people die from this smoke than malaria – globally, about 4.3 million every year. And that’s not all. ...

[By Zsuzsanna Gal] In an atmosphere where every morning newspapers greet people with stories of girls being tormented, raped, killed or treated like a doormat, India’s beautiful small village communities can still bring some good news from time to time. Many parts of India historically favors the birth of a son, but villages like Piplantri in Rajasthan state have a ...

New Delhi June 5 (WFS) — Climate change is a reality that no one can refute any longer. If left unchecked, it will have far reaching impacts on human health, global food security and economic development. Whereas no single country causes climate change, and no one country can stop it, there is an urgent need for concerted action. As the world ...

Chewang Norphel may seem like an ordinary villager but in reality he is far from the ordinary. In a place 13,000 feet above sea level, this remarkable man is taking on the global warming challenge head on and doing something extraordinary . He is building glaciers. Using artificial glaciers to slowdown the global warming, may seem like a far fetched concept but Norphel’s technique ...

Going to buy fish today? If you are living in India’s West Bengal state, where fish is a daily staple for millions of people whether rich or poor, beware! More than one study has pointed to the alarming levels of mercury in fish, way above permissible limits and posing a grave danger to health. And no matter how much you ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara| New Internationalist] Did you celebrate World Sparrow Day on 20 March?  It bothers me when I read that these birds are becoming extinct in Indian cities. Chirpy, cheeky little sparrows were part of our life, growing up as children in a dilapidated Kolkata flat. They nested high up in an old-fashioned ventilator. And caused us kids ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Something to cheer about. In the midst of doom and gloom, I attended a Vikalp Sangam or ‘Confluence of ideas’. It was a meeting not just of several minds, but of people who were doing something positive rather than merely cribbing about the state of the world.