Feature Article

ELEMENTS like nitrogen and phosphorous are required in small quantities by both plants and animals. With increasing agriculture the levels of these fertilisers being released into water bodies has increased. This has led to pollution and depletion of oxygen in water bodies due to excessive growth of some plants. This changes river biodiversity and distribution of species.

THE Himalayas are warming at a rate higher than the global average. A recent study documents how this has affected cropping patterns and vegetation in the past 10 years.

IT is a neurotoxin that accumulates in marine organisms and can have serious implications on human health. The toxin, monomethylmercury, is of particular concern to people whose traditional diet consists of seafood.

IN THE first week of April, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) oversaw an experiment to monitor, minute to minute, the water quality of the river Yamuna. The two-week trial at the water intake point of the Wazirabad water treatment plant in north-east Delhi was conducted by a private firm to ascertain the feasibility of monitoring water quality real time.

“This magazine is not a product of a desire to capture share of the information market. It is a product of a need and desire to fill a critical information gap.”

McDonald saheb, Qureshi saheb, Jivan Singh, Aadal Singh, Udham Singh …. Eighty-yearold Lakshmi Nishad rattles off all the names she remembers of the forest officers who have served in the Gorakhpur range. The display of memory is a desperate attempt to prove that she has lived all her life in this forest area of Uttar Pradesh.

In the early 1990s, hospitals in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province, the main agricultural region of the country, started reporting an unusually high incidence of chronic renal failure. About 5,000 persons reported ill in 1993. By 2009, the disease assumed epidemic proportions. That year over 9,000 patients from North Central and its neighbouring Uva and North Western provinces were under treatment in Anuradhapura Hospital alone. The disease, which often requires kidney transplant in its last stage, has since been a leading cause of deaths in the region.

Following the historic forest rights victory on April 27, mood in Mendha Lekha is upbeat. Gram sabha of this village in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district started felling about 90,000 bamboos a day after winning the right to harvest and sell the minor forest produce (MFP).