Ravleen kaur

A recent accident that killed 24 students in Himachal Pradesh has pointed fingers yet again to the much neglected area of dam safety. More than assigning blame, it's time we assigned responsibility.

Increasing plastic pollution in the sea has added to the many challenges faced by traditional fishers, forcing them to migrate from a Nature-based livelihood to daily-wage and blue-collar jobs

Plastics may be affordable and convenient but their production burdens people living near the refineries. At the Global Plastic Treaty talks in Geneva last month, negotiations for a binding treaty ended without consensus over disagreement on plastic production.

At least 234 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists had registered for the INC 5.2 talks

Along with countries like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, India is resisting any change in the text of the treaty that calls for binding limits on plastic manufacturing and the chemicals used in it

After 10 days of negotiations in Geneva to develop a strategy to end plastic pollution, countries failed to reach a consensus on a treaty.

Waste Pickers vs Plastic Crisis: Inside the UN Treaty Talks in Geneva

India's mint farmers now face stiff competition from synthetic menthol, coupled with rising production costs and high taxes. These challenges are only exacerbated by climate change, which is making harvests less reliable.

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Upturned harvest
Afrequent traveller to rural parts of northern India will find something odd about the roadside sights on a ride from Jaipur to Jobner, especially during late March.
On the fields flanking the nearly 50-km stretch, bundles of freshly cut wheat signal the harvest season. But instead of the golden ears swishing joyfully in the air, one sees a jumble of thread-like roots.
“The grains are actually hidden in the shade of stems,” Nanu Ram Khan daliya who lives in Pach...

An increase in the consumption of tender coconut and its products is leading to an increase in tender coconut husk in landfill sites and on road corners.
Solid waste management experts say that there are technologies to recycle tender coconut husk into value added products, but the lack of source segregation makes their retrieval difficult.

Nurdles, the tiny plastic pellets used as feedstock for making plastic products, are becoming dangerous as they spill into land and waterways during transportation. Animals mistake nurdles for food, causing fatalities while putting plastic into the food chain.
While India has been focusing heavily on ‘managing’ plastic waste, such as beach clean-up drives, and has also been working on a Marine Litter Policy since 2018, activists argue that plastic is not just a litter problem, as the government wants to project.

Gujarat produces 80% of India’s salt. Most of it is produced in coastal areas which are impacted by unpredictable rainfall and cyclones.
As production in coastal salt works has reduced, and demand for edible and industrial salt as well as exports has increased, prices have gone up.
Long-standing salt producers say that an active government authority should regulate the salt industry as it is an essential commodity.

With a rising demand for vehicles, there has been a corresponding increase in the use of tyres leading to more waste tyres.
Scrap tyre comes under the category of hazardous waste owing to its potential to cause fires and resultant toxic emissions in air and water.
The government introduced extended producers’ responsibility for waste tyres in 2022 but data shows that the tyre production industry has not started complying yet.

Surat’s textile industry is improving its manufacturing processes with efficient use of coal, electricity and water and by adopting renewable energy, to deal with the impacts of climate change and also be eco-friendly.
While liquid effluents are being dealt with by following good practices, the use of fossil fuels and the generation of petrochemical-based fabric waste, still remain problems.
Workers involved in steam-based operations are often exposed to high temperatures, which become too intense during summers.

The brackish water ecology of the Little Rann of Kutch, is made up of a mix of seawater, river run-off and rainwater, which makes it an ideal nursery ground for ginger prawns.
However, this hydrological regime where ginger prawn thrives is broken by the expansion of marine salt works and reduced freshwater runoff from rivers.
Rann Sarovar, a proposed freshwater lake in the Little Rann of Kutch, would, if approved, deal a final blow to this small-scale fishery.