Earth Overshoot Day 2018: The day we use up whatever the Earth can give us this year

Every year, the Earth has a certain limit to the natural resources it produces. This includes the oxygen it generates from plants and trees, the food it produces, the timber it can provide, the non-timber forest products we can gather, the life it can support. We, the advanced species that we are, have decided to […]

R-strategists, K-strategists and Survivorship curves: The reproductive adaptations of different organisms

Have you ever wondered why dogs and humans reproduce very differently? Why their litter is so big, often up to 7-8 pups while humans rarely give birth to more than 1 child at a time? Well, there is a reason for it, and it has to do with the rate of mortality or death the […]

The US miraculously reduce carbon emissions

Drastically different from what pundits claimed when Trump left the Paris Climate Agreement, US has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions over the last one year. The Energy Information Administration’s report claims that increase in renewables, decrease in coal-based energy and an increase in natural gas usage for energy have combined to cause this drop to […]

2018 Environmental Performance Index: Where does India stand?

The 2018 Environmental Protection Index is one of the most recent, data-driven matrices to rank countries according to their environmental performance. This data-driven, empirical approach allows us to better understand the progress a country is making and the areas of the environment and health that the governments need to focus on in their respective countries. […]

AKVO: Plucking water out of thin air!

Water is a big crisis in today’s world. It doesn’t matter where you live or how lavishly you live; you are going to face the brunt of the water crisis now or at some point in the future. The problem remains acute in India and the crisis is only growing. Despite relying on a variety […]

Graded Response Action Plan: How Delhi plans to combat severe air pollution

For the last three years, the months of October and November see extensive coverage of how bad the air in Delhi is. Winters in the capital are a time of excruciating discomfort and irritation in various forms; delayed flights, extreme traffic, low visibility, inability to breathe and irritation in all kinds of body parts. I’ve […]

India’s Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981

In light of recent alarming trends in air quality of India, I felt that it is a good idea to revisit one of the most important environmental legislation to have come into effect in India, and to see what the government had in mind when it came out with this Act. The Air (Prevention and […]

WHY IS THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA LEANING?

Constructed in three phases, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is definitely the most well-known architectural maverick and one of the great wonders of the medieval world. And this wonder, does perfect justice to its name. IT ACTUALLY IS LEANING. Construction of the Leaning Tower of Pisa occurred in three phases, spanning nearly two whole centuries […]

SUMATRA TSUNAMI AND EARTHQUAKE: DEADLIEST DISASTER OF ALL TIME

Tsunamis have been a relatively rare event in the Indian Ocean, at least in human memory, and have been quite prevalent in the Pacific. But every ocean has generated the scourges and left millions of people with scarred memories. Fourteen years ago, such an event occurred, when an earthquake of magnitude 9.1 struck beneath the […]

Groundwater recharge through irrigation losses in New Zealand

A guest blog by Nigel Cowburn. Nigel is a landscape architect based in New Zealand. I recently attended the New Zealand Irrigation Conference. One topic that came up often was aquifer recharge. NZ is undergoing a rapid shift from government funded irrigation to private sector schemes. The government-led approach resulted in over-allocation of many […]