Titagarh's slum upgrading experience demonstrates that social pressure and lobbying, particularly by women's groups, can be very effective in controlling rents, even when there is no legal contract between tenants and landlords.
Small and marginal farmers are the worst hit by the problems that afflict agriculture. The macro and micro level factors together have created stress among the poor farmers forcing them to commit suicide.
The present study analyses viable methods of rainwater harvesting in drought-prone Bolangir and examines different bio-physical and socio-economic factors that influence the performance and sustainability of the water harvesting structures (WHSs). The study reveals that the traditional WHSs have proved to be extremely useful not only in normal years but also in water-scarce years.
A major conservation issue, particularly in the tropics, is habitat loss and fragmentation due to developmental activities and increasing human populations.
Concepts of environmental conservation and management are directly linked to the practice of development. Development has been seen as not only an instrument to increase production, but also to remove poverty. But anti-poverty schemes in India have not been sustainable and are conditioned by the kind of finance available for their implementation.
A major conservation issue, particularly in the tropics, is habitat loss and fragmentation due to developmental activities and increasing human populations.
In an era of a rapidly shrinking biological resources, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a historic landmark, being the first global agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. The CBD is one of the few international agreements in the area of natural resource conservation in which sustainability and equitable benefit-sharing are central concerns.
Under the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in south-western West Bengal, regenerating deciduous forests are being managed for the extraction of numerous plant products, both for commercial benefits and subsistence-level use, on a large scale.
All recycling in India is undertaken by (and via) the informal sector. This sector includes waste-pickers, small middlemen, transporters, larger middlemen and finally, reprocessors. These self-employed people play a very important role in urban waste management as they provide a service which the urban municipalities cannot provide given their current institutional framework.
Urban India is likely to face a massive waste disposal problem in the coming years. Traditionally, the problem of waste has been seen simply as one of cleaning and disposing. But a closer look at the current and future scenarios reveals that waste needs to be treated holistically, recognising its natural resources roots as well as its health impacts.
