Food security: Is history going to repeat itself?

Throughout history, empires have risen and fallen. Many reasons are attributed to this rise and fall; disease, famine, invasion. However, what is generally overlooked is the role food, and food economics, in this rise and fall of empires and civilizations. The historic practice of agriculture Ever since the agricultural revolution, human beings changed their lifestyle […]

Adapting to Climate Change: Bangladesh

Today when 98% of the world’s population is busy worrying about climate change and the rest 2% arguing about it being a hoax; do you know how the affected countries are trying to deal with changing conditions? Melting glaciers, increasing sea level, severe floods and drought conditions are changing lives of millions of people. But […]

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 […]

How does LULC change affect groundwater recharge?

It has been seen all over the world that while the land cover is changing rapidly, the effect it is having on groundwater and it’s recharge is becoming more and more significant. This is especially true in places that rely solely on groundwater to meet their water needs. As groundwater extraction is increasing around the […]

Why is shifting cultivation being blamed for land degradation?

I’m on a study tour through South India, visiting different National Parks and scientific institutes. Today was my first day, and already, the lectures we had were extremely interesting… One of the lectures I really found fascinating was given by Amit Jose Kurian, a research scholar at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and […]

What are improper agricultural practices doing to our land?

Bigger the family, more the mouths to feed. When the human family is as large as 7 billion, the amount of food that needs to be produced to feed all of them (ideally) is mind boggling. In India, the amount of calories that a healthy male is expected to eat is about 3100 calories per […]