CLIMATE CARE - NORTHEAST INDIA

MONOJ GOGOI The fire that broke out at a massive landfill in Bhalswa in North Delhi on Tuesday (26th April) raises several pertinent questions. Eruption of small fires in such garbage dumping areas were common as local people reported but this type of massive blazing was rare. The size of the dumping ground was about 36 acres and mountainous and the fire tenders were struggling for three days to douse it.  But why it’s started to happen? In the last 30 days four landfill fires occurred – on March 28 at Ghazipur, April 10 at Ghazipur and again on April 20 at Ghazipur; but this time it occurred in Bhalswa of North Delhi on Tuesday. As mentioned in the previous write-up, the incidents of fire have been increasing. Climate change impacts worldwide can be attributed as one of the primary causes. The atmospheric temperature was around 42C on Tuesday. The methane gas is very vulnerable for ignition, in such dumping yards the rotten garbage emits methane in high rate. Mismanagement ...

MONOJ GOGOI   Wildfire is a very major natural disaster in many parts of the world, including some parts in Australia, the United States of America, Brazil or Peru etc. In many countries, fire was not considered seriously or more devastating than other hazards like flood and erosion, cyclone, storm, earthquake, drought, landslide etc. But now, wildfires or other fires are becoming more focal issues in some countries where such incidents were not taken care of with much attention.   In a speech to the Chief Ministers, today, on April 27th, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tells towards the end of his speech that temperature is soaring in many parts of India drastically and much earlier than the normal period. He states that incidents of wildfires or fires in buildings, residential areas and hospitals are increasing rapidly increasing. Modi warns the Chief Ministers fire hazards may increase fatalities and create catastrophes. Hospital authourities should be more ca...

Thawing permafrost is roiling the Arctic landscape, driven by a hidden world of changes beneath the surface as the climate warms Permafrost and ice wedges have built up over millennia in the Arctic. When they thaw, they destabilize the surrounding landscape. Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images Mark J. Lara , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Across the Arctic, strange things are happening to the landscape. Massive lakes, several square miles in size, have disappeared in the span of a few days. Hillsides slump. Ice-rich ground collapses, leaving the landscape wavy where it once was flat, and in some locations creating vast fields of large, sunken polygons. It’s evidence that permafrost, the long-frozen soil below the surface, is thawing. That’s bad news for the communities built above it – and for the global climate. As an ecologist , I study these dynamic landscape interactions and have been document...

MONOJ GOGOI The UN’s ‘ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples’ is celebrated across the world today on August 9, 2021. This year the UN decided ‘Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract '  as theme of the Day. This one is one of the most significant Days to think and take local and global decisions for the rights of the indigenous people inhabiting with their own culture and lifestyles across the globe. Through a resolution (47/214), taken on 23 rd December, 1994, the UN General Assembly had decided 9 th August to be observed as the International Day of the World Indigenous Peoples as on this day in 1982, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights had held the first meeting. The number of indigenous people across the world is estimated around 476 million which would be approximately 5% of world’s total population. But in the context of poverty, illi...

  MONOJ GOGOI AUG 4 Th , 2021 A severe storm hit more than 10 villages near Dhunagiri and Bihpuria  this morning under Bihpuria revenue circle in Lakhimpur district. The storm, accompanied by strong wind flattened innumerous houses, granneries, cowsheds, standind crops and uprooted many trees which also affected in damaging houses. The uprooted trees created blockade the roods in many places and disrupted electricity to the area. The most afeected villages in this storm were Dah Gharia, Bholukaguri, Kalbari, Aunibari, Ronganoi Chenimara, Gongrabari, Bahgarha Pathar, Puroni Bahgorha etc. Ramchandra Hazarika, a village headman, informed that the storm started around 5:10 am this morning and continued upto an hour which ravaged the area. He also told that this was an unprecedented and unseasonal. This type of storm was never witnessed in this season, some of the elderly people of the area informed. Bijoy Doley, the secretary of Village Disaster Management Committee (VDMC) o...

MONOJ GOGOI  PHOTO CREDIT: TONMOY CHUTIA  When the northern and western states of India are reeling under severe floods due to heavy precipitations or cloud bursts in the northern Himalayan states now, drought like situation in upper Assam, particularly in the districts of north bank districts – Dhemaji and Lakhimpur, highly affects the water intensive crops. The people who live in the flood-prone areas reported that instead of flood, in this flood season the farmers were facing acute water crisis for agricultural purpose. Some farmers from the Kadam Revenue Circle and the Bihpuria Revenue Circle informed that the bau rice (deep water rice) was not growing as expected as there was no adequate quantity of water in the paddy fields Raj Kumar Chandi, a youth from the Dhunaguri area under Bihpuria RC informed that farmers from many flood affected villages from the area traditionally depended upon bau cultivation and this year too, the farmers expected tried to grow this water inte...