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Why does rabies still plague India in the 21st century?
Full text linkIn a rapidly changing world, responsive and scientifically sound surveillance systems are needed in order to better understand, and possibly predict outbreaks and spread of zoonotic infectious diseases. Unfortunately in India, most efforts towards strengthening response to zoonoses have mainly focused on improving technical and laboratory capacity. Surveillance and the collection of field data have either been neglected or at best patchily implemented
Need for national policy to recover endangered species
Full text linkIndia is bestowed with world’s four mega-biodiversity hotspots. In fact, India is the only country that is
blessed so many of these biodiversity regions. However, this rich biodiversity is under severe threat owing to
the increasing population as well as indiscriminate extraction from natural populations. Unplanned land use
in the name of economic development have rendered a number of species in the under the threatened category. In the most recent update, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2016) assigned a total of 1052 species as red listed. Of these, 75 animals and 77 plants are in the critically endangered list with many others being in the endangered and vulnerable categories. What is even more worrying is the fact that a large number of species have been reduced to incredibly small numbers due to either habitat degradation or illegal hunting/harvesting. Unless immediate measures are taken up, a number of these species could be in the red-list within a matter of few years. Unfortunately as of now, except for few attempts, there has been no concerted program in the country to address the restoration of the threatened species
Identifying Conservation Priority Sites for Saraca Asoca: An Important Medicinal Plant Using Ecological Niche Models
No full textSaraca asoca (Roxb.) de Wilde belonging to family Caesalpiniaceae has been used to manage gynecological disorders and infections besides being used for treating bacterial infections, skin problems, worm infestations, cardiac and circulatory problems. Almost all parts of the plant are considered therapeutically valuable. The plant has been extensively mentioned in several folklores besides ayurvedic literature. This has lead to the availability of several commercial 5. asoca formulations recommended for different ailments. Owing to a large number of herbal formulations, the domestic demand
for Ashoka bark in India was reported to be more than 15,000 metric tonnes. This increased demand has led to extensive and indiscriminate extraction of S. asoca resources in several parts of country. In this paper, using distribution records of S. asoca in India, the hotspots of distribution of S. asoca have been identified using Ecological Niche Modelling (ENM) tools. ENMs use species occurrence records along with climatic and other environmental variables to generate species distribution maps. These distribution maps are used to identify suitable habitats for cultivation of species to meet the
demand of herbal industry. The distribution of S. asoca for future climate scenarios has also been modelled. Predicting how species distribution will change in the wake of future global climate change, is important to develop effective conservation strategies
A dynamic framework for water security
No full textWater security is a multi-faceted problem, going beyond mere balancing of supply and demand. Early
attempts to quantify water security relied on static index based approaches that failed to acknowledge
that human action is intrinsic to the water cycle.
Human adaptation to environmental change and increasing spatial specialization in the modern world
necessitate a more flexible and dynamic view of water security.
Starting from first principles, and through application of simple water balance concepts to human impacted water systems, we first develop a set of indicators for water insecurity. We then offer an approach to model these indicators as outcomes of coupled human-water systems to anticipate watershed trajectories under human impacts, predict water insecurity and inform appropriate action. In this way, far from being a static index, water security signifies a ‘‘safe operating subspace” within a three
dimensional space that maps physical resource availability, infrastructure and economic choices
Factors Influencing Perceptions and Use of Urban Nature: Surveys of Park Visitors in Delhi
Full text linkUrban green spaces provide important recreational, social and psychological benefits to stressed city residents. This paper aims to understand the importance of parks for visitors. We focus on Delhi, the world’s second most populous city, drawing on 123 interviews with park visitors in four prominent city parks. Almost all respondents expressed the need for more green spaces. Visitors valued parks primarily for environmental and psychological/health benefits. They had limited awareness of biodiversity, with one out of three visitors unable to identify tree species
and one out of four visitors unable to identify animal species frequenting the park. Most of the daily visitors lived within 0.5 km of these parks, but a small fraction of visitors traveled over 10 km to visit these major parks, despite having smaller neighbourhood parks in their vicinity. This study demonstrates the importance of large, well-maintained, publicly accessible parks in a crowded city. The results can help to better plan and design urban green spaces, responding to the needs and preferences of urban communities. This research contributes to the severely limited information on people’s perceptions of and requirements from urban nature in cities of the Global South
Comparing pixel and object-based approaches to map an understorey invasive shrub in tropical mixed forests
Full text linkThe establishment of invasive alien species in varied habitats across the world is now recognized as a genuine threat to the preservation of biodiversity. Specifically, plant invasions in understory tropical forests are detrimental to the persistence of healthy ecosystems. Monitoring such invasions using Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite remote sensing has been shown to be valuable in designing management interventions for conservation of native habitats. Object-based classification methods are very helpful in identifying invasive plants in various habitats, by their inherent nature of imitating the ability of the human brain in pattern recognition. However, these methods have not been tested adequately in dense tropical mixed forests where invasion occurs in the understorey. This study compares a pixel-based and object-based classification method for mapping the understorey invasive shrub Lantana camara (Lantana) in a tropical mixed forest habitat in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot in India. Overall, a hierarchical approach of mapping top canopy at first, and then further processing for the understorey shrub, using measures such as texture and vegetation indices proved effective in separating out Lantana from other cover types. In the first method, we implement a simple parametric supervised classification for mapping cover types, and then process within these types for Lantana delineation. In the second method, we use an object-based segmentation algorithm to map cover types, and then perform further processing for separating Lantana. The improved ability of the object-based approach to delineate structurally distinct objects with characteristic spectral and spatial characteristics of their own, as well as with reference to their surroundings, allows for much flexibility in identifying invasive understorey shrubs among the complex vegetation of the tropical forest than that provided by the parametric classifier. Conservation practices in tropical mixed forests can benefit greatly by adopting methods which use high resolution remotely sensed data and advanced techniques to monitor the patterns and effective functioning of native ecosystems by periodically mapping disturbances such as invasion
Swachh Bharat Mission: Groundwater Contamination in Peri-urban India
No full textThe Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was announced on 2 October
2014 with the objective to achieve universal sanitation and make India open defecation free by 2019, the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. The SBM is the latest sanitation programme, in a long line of programmes, going back to the First Five Year Plan in 1954 when the rural sanitation programme was first introduced. The SBM has arguably been
more visible to the public than its predecessor,the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. The SBM programme is being implemented
by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (2014) (MDWS) for the rural (Gramin) segment and the Ministry of
Urban Dev elopment (2014) (MOUD) for the urban segment. Under the SBM (Gramin), for example, there has been a rise of nearly 16% in households with toilets since 2014, and over 1.2 lakh villages have self-declared to be open defecation free. Similarly, under the SBM (urban), almost 28 lakh individual and community toilets have been constructed and 405 cities are open defecation free.1
The SBM, therefore, offers a promising solution to address the issues of sanitation and water in rapidly urbanising
areas. However, the groundwater and sanitation nexus, in the emerging periurban regions, needs a detailed discussion
in order to understand its implications for the SBM
From Groundwater Regulation to Integrated Water Management: The Biophysical Case
No full textGroundwater over-exploitation poses a severe threat to food, water and livelihood security in India, but the
approach to groundwater regulation has been guided
by the simplistic prescription that to achieve sustainable
use, pumping must be less than recharge. This article
explains the hydrological cycle and the close relationship
between groundwater and surface water, and argues that the conventional notion of sustainable groundwater use is fundamentally flawed. Groundwater, soil moisture and surface water are part of a single integrated resource, and cannot be regulated independent of each other. The solution is not sustainable use or the compartmentalisation of surface and groundwater but the fair and transparent reallocation of renewablefreshwater resources
Amphibians of the Sikkim Himalaya, India: an annotated checklist
Full text linkWe present an annotated list of amphibians for the state of Sikkim, India. Data were obtained through literature reviews, fieldwork and review of museum collections. Forty-four species of amphibians belonging to 20 genera in eight families and three orders have been reported in Sikkim from 1864 to 2015. During our fieldwork, we recorded 23 species, of which two are new records for the state
Trading on conservation: A marine protected area as an ecological fix
No full textMany developing countries have encouraged the expansion of mechanised fishing in order to engage in the lucrative export of seafood. This has caused a rise in the incidental mortality of marine wildlife. In recent years, widespread concern over wildlife deaths has been used by developed consumer countries to insist on mitigation measures or to impose economic sanctions. Hence, many supplier countries have been forced to implement wildlife conservation measures to safeguard their export-driven marine fisheries. In this paper, we present an account of how the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary, an iconic Marine Protected Area in eastern India, was created in such a context. We suggest that it serves as an ecological fix, i.e. a token spatial solution that removes environmental barriers to the accumulation of capital, and we describe how a combination of neoliberal actors has maintained it for more than two decades so as to greenwash subsequent industrialisation along the coast.
Finally, we describe its social and ecological repercussions to highlight the contrast between ground realities and
the win–win discourse that accompanies such efforts to integrate conservation with capitalistic production