Current Issue - Volume 15 Issue 7 (October 2022)

In this beautifully-woven account, Dr Elsa Lycias Joel reminisces the time she spent and still spends at her mother’s home in a lush-green remote village called Meycode in Tamil Nadu. Meycode abounds with exotic species of different flora and fauna. She says if you visit Meycode, do spend a few minutes by the ponds and lakes, particularly Kaakapon Kulam.

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A new study by entomologists shows that the lifespan for individual honey bees kept in a controlled, laboratory environment is 50 per cent shorter than it was in the 1970s. As the first study to show an overall decline in honey bee lifespan potentially independent of environmental stressors, this work hints that genetics may be influencing the broader trends of higher colony turnover rates seen in the beekeeping industry.

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Set in acres of natural forest, the World of Dinosaurs is one of the UK’s biggest and most spectacular animatronic dinosaur attractions as it features 30 life-size, moving and roaring dinosaurs.
Dr Marianne Furtado de Nazareth gives an overview of the park, which is a real thrill for any dinosaur adventurer.

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In this article, Sarita Brara apprises about the pioneering initiative by NGO Karvan in Himachal Pradesh where sacks full of the dry pine needles that are considered a major cause of forest fire in Himachal Pradesh were collected by the students with the twin objective of protecting the forests and environment and skilling the children in the art of making worthy products made from pine needles.

– Robert Brault

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Mr Pranesh Chhibber is the Country Director of Forestry Innovation Consulting India Pvt. Ltd (FII India) since 2014. FII India, better known as ‘Canadian Wood’ is a not-for-profit crown agency of the Govt. of British Columbia, supported by NRCan (Natural Resources, Canada). It is engaged in the promotion of its forest products in the offshore markets. Here, we are in conversation with Mr Chhibber for TerraGreen. read more

The Government of India launched broad reforms under the Skill India Mission in 2015 to train 400 million Indians by 2022. However, little is known about the social processes of skill acquisition, especially within the agricultural sector in rural India. In 2020–2021, Prof. Nitya Rao, co-led a study with Dr Soundarya Iyer, which was published recently in the journal Third World Quarterly. They conducted work-life course interviews with men and women between the ages of 18–65 in a village in southern Karnataka to better understand the informal and non-formal processes of skill acquisition in agriculture and allied activities. Their study shows that formal skilling opportunities are geared towards leaving agriculture, and the next generation of agriculturists depend on informal and non-formal mechanisms which are filtered through the intersecting identities of gender, generation, caste, and class, and are central in shaping farming futures.

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A riverine ecosystem also called a lotic ecosystem is the ecosystem of any spring, stream, or river. From the source to the mouth, the waters are flowing (lotic) and show a longitudinal gradient in temperatures, the concentration of dissolved material, turbidity, and atmospheric gases. Rivers are very much necessary for the existence of our civilization and considered to be a crucial and precious national asset of India.

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