Article Manshi Asher published on 07/02/22 in The Wire Science Last year on this day, bone-chilling images emerged from a tragic disaster in the Himalaya. A group of workers desperate to save their lives were huddled under the roof of the Tapovan Dam barrage in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, even as a deluge roared over them. Someone […]
Interactive timeline | The ‘Clean Energy’ Hazardscape
by Manshi Asher Sunderlal Bahuguna may have departed, but there are many formidable repositories of diverse oral and embodied knowledge that we could fall back on In the era of irreversible ecological destruction, initiatives to ‘save the environment’ mushroom every day. It is, after all, also the age of ‘solutions’. ‘Green’ is now a pre-fix […]
Scroll down for Hindi We express our grief and utmost anguish for the lives lost in the tragic event that occurred in Chamoli Uttarakhand. We hear that hundreds are missing and several feared dead. We are also aware that there is no clear statement from the government or any other State agency about the exact event […]
हिमालयी क्षेत्रों में जल विद्युत विकास को स्वच्छ और अक्षय ऊर्जा के नाम पर बढ़ावा देने की होड़ पिछले दो दशकों से चल रही है। हिमाचल में बड़े पैमाने पर इन पनबिजली परियोजनाओं और संबंधित टावर लाईनों का निर्माण हुआ है और इसके लिए हज़ारों हेक्टेयर वन भूमि का हस्तांतरण भी किया गया है। वन […]
Amending environmental norms will accelerate ecological crisis in the Himalayas ‘WITHDRAW DRAFT EIA NOTIFICATION 2020’: 50+ organisations, environmentalists from Himalayan region write to Environment Ministry More than 50 environmental groups, organisations, eminent ideologues and activists from across various states of the Himalayan region have issued a joint statement titled ‘STOP ACCELERATING ECOSYSTEMS DISTRESS IN THE […]
The disastrous flash floods in Uttarkhand in June 2013 turned the spotlight on a frontier region in the Western Himalayas, at least for a time. Was it a cloud burst or heavy rainfall? Could it have been predicted and prevented? Did the meteorological department mess up or was the problem the state government’s slow response? […]
Date: 18 May 2020 To, The Chief Minister, Government of Himachal Pradesh. SUBJECT: ENSURE PUBLIC SAFETY AUDITS PRIOR TO RE-OPENING OF INDUSTRIES AND PROJECTS TO PREVENT INDUSTRIAL DISASTERS/ACCIDENTS Shri Jairam Thakur ji, As the government of Himachal decides to re-open the factories and industrial units in the state after a period of almost 5 weeks, […]
On the 30th of April 2020, a large portion of a steep mountain in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh slipped down to village Pangi destroying apple orchards and killing one Nepali migrant worker. This area in the high Himalayas, falling in the Satluj Valley, which is known for its geological and ecological vulnerability, is also […]
Written by Aditi Vajpeyi & Vaishnavi Rathore Published on Economic and Political Weekly The emergence of the Forest Rights Act reasserted the vitality of the role people play in conservation and management of natural resources and carving out legal channels for recognition of their forest rights. But, in Himachal Pradesh, the FRA suffers at the […]