Conventional thinking has it that floods are caused by excessive rainfall. ARCHITA BHATTA finds out that wasn't necessarily the case this year While people in the flood-affected areas are

The Task Force for Flood Management and Erosion Control Report of 2004 iterates what the Centre For Science and Environment publication (State of the Environment 1991) had said. It notes that the

This year in mid July, the Baghmati, Budhi Gandhak and Lakhandai went into spate in Bihar. In Assam, several districts were engulfed by the waters of the Brahmaputra. Uttarakhand experienced flash floods and waters surged in Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Gujarat

Floods in the mountain kingdom of Nepal? It sounds unlikely, but Nepal has a low-lying region called Terai, and much of it has been submerged in the past week following intense rains during the south Asian monsoon. Even more surprisingly, Nepal is blaming its downstream neighbour, India, for the floods.

DOZENS of Indonesians killed by landslides this spring have paid the price of unchecked development. Many other innocents in developing nations die each year as rampant illegal logging and deforestation denude steep hillsides, loosening soil and allowing heavy rains to create deadly deluges. Such environmental perils are increasingly common across much of the world as native forests are fragmented, waterways polluted, and oceans over-harvested. The onslaught is especially alarming in the tropics, where an area of forest the size of 40 football fields is destroyed every minute.

Low-elevation coastal zones (leczs) are areas at an elevation of 10 metres or less above sea level. Although leczs account for just 2 per cent of the world's total land area, they contain