A field experiment was conducted during 2003

Coal is the only natural resource and fossil fuel available in abundance in India. The major environmental challenges encountering the coal industry are impacts of mine fires, dust suppression and control particularly haul road dust consolidation, treatment of mine waters

In semi arid areas such as the Sahelian zone of Africa, many oils have become severely degraded. One extreme form is the bare and crusted soil, which is virtually productively "dead". In Burkina Faso, farmers have responded by applying mulch to attract termites that then help to rehabilitate the soil. A research project shows the importance of termites in breaking up hardened soil and increasing water infiltration. The land became productive enough to farm within months.

A World Bank-aided project on sodic land reclamation in Uttar Pradesh is being executed by U.P. Bhumi Sudhar Nigam, Lucknow, and Remote Sensing Applications Centre, U.P., Lucknow has the responsibility of sodic land mapping for the execution of land reclamation programme at the cadastral level.

Excessive use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides has affected soil and water quality in the Jaffna peninsula, Sri Lanka. Students from the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Jaffna have been learning about green manures from farmers, and how they have been used to improve soils. Green manures were also used successfully to rehabilitate salinated soils affected by the tsunami. These and other organic practices are now being promoted with and by farmers.

Integrating cover crops and green manures helps farmers rehabilitate degraded soils in highland areas. In Ecuador, farmers experimented with this conservation practice. They found that it improved their farming system in many ways: increased productivity in their main crop, decreased weeding time, provided them with an extra crop (for food, fodder, marketing), besides rehabilitating their soils.

The Earth's climate is changing because the composition of our atmosphere is being altered, primarily as a consequence of human activity. We are now also experiencing a non-cyclical rise in the global temperature caused by the accumulation of the so-called "greenhouse gases"--carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and others.

If India as a country stands accused of failure to protect the national animal, the state of Uttar Pradesh is now on the verge of being indicted in the same manner for threatening the very existence of the state bird, the Sarus Crane, in the districts of Etawah and Mainpuri where it has been apparently flourishing. The U.P. Govt formed a Sarus Protection Society and earmarked Rs. 10 crores for the purpose, but it is lying in cold storage. (May 2008)