A year of Environmental Reporting: My 2019 in 5 Photos

I haven't blogged this year. But all through the year, I traveled, telling the stories that somehow didn't get reported or, as a colleague once said, "just fell through the crack". And while on my job, there were many powerful moments that filled me with strength and inspiration - the reason why I could go on, no matter how hard it was. Sharing today, as I say goodbye to this year, 5 of those moments. Have a look and feel free to share, if you  like them.

#1. The Peatland Restorers of Philippines

Standing guard over the vast stretch of peatland in Leyte sab-a basin , Philippines, these are women of Tacloban, Palo and Leyte who have survived several disasters including the 2013 typhoon Hayan. And now they have joined hands to restore the peatland which is a crucial step towards restoring the entire ecosystem of the region.

River Trilogy Part 1: Mighty Mekong - the Mighty Carrier of Plastic

I have marked 2018 as the year of visiting our great rivers. 

And so, since January, I have visited half a dozen rivers across Asia. Among them are the 3 of the continent's mightiest rivers: Mekong, Irrawaddy and Padma. I spent a couple of days - and nights too - by each of these great rivers, travelling along them, visiting communities that live by them and experiencing the riverside life.

On this World Environment Day, I am starting to write some of my experiences. I begin with Mekong.

I visited Mekong in Can Tho of Vietnam - known as the heart of the Mekong Delta. As my flight drew closer to Ho Chi Minh City, I could see the serpentine image of the river - zigzagging through the delta. I was awestruck!


A few hours later, I was in Can Tho checking into a modest guest house right over the river. It was 31st December. Back home and everywhere else, my family and friends were partying. The wi fi did not work, so I was cut off from everybody.

Lying in the darkness of my room, I could hear the burbles of Mekong. Occasionally I could hear boats paddling away. In a few hours time, the night would end and the morning sun would rise and I was going to welcome the rising sun - the first sun of 2018 - over the Mekong. I slept with that beautiful dream.

At dawn, I was up and sitting on a fishing boat with my fellow journalist friend Dinh Tuyen who lived in Can Tho. It was still somewhat dark and yet there were several other boats around us already. We were all moving to one destination: Cai Rang -the floating farmers' market.

The market, in nature, was not very different from the other floating markets I have seen in Thailand or elsewhere. But this was bigger and of course on the wide open river. All kind farm-fresh produce -from fresh fruits (pineapple, rambutan and guava) to vegetables, fish, besides groceries etc sold in the market.

As we were cruising through the market enjoying some fresh fruits and meeting some old farmers, the sun was getting hot and the crowd of tourists was growing bigger.

For us, this was time to move out of the market area and visit some riverside villagers. However, as we started out, the boatman began to slow down and halt abruptly. He had a nagging, nasty problem: plastic bags. Every few minutes, he would pull the oars out of the water and clear it off the plastic. 

And then it stuck me: floating around me were all kind of plastic trash: sandals, bags and plastic bottles of mineral water and soft drinks. The last one was clearly a contribution of the tourists.

Tuyen, who was born in the mountains of northern Vietnam, had fallen in love with the Mekong during a trip to Can Tho several years ago and decided to live here. He has been covering the Mekong Delta for years and he says, the volume of plastic trash in the river has been growing in an alarming rate.

There is a general lack of awareness, he says, about plastic pollution of a river. From fish to fruits to biscuits, everything comes in a plastic bag. Nobody bothers to discard this on the land and instead, just tosses it away in the river. "The current carries away everything (to the ocean), so nobody thinks its a big deal",  Tuyen told me.

There is no organized drive yet to  prevent this or to educate the communities yet, but the locals are indeed feeling the heat of the pollution, Tuyen says. The color of the water is changing and the fish catch is decreasing. But there is a much bigger damage of the plastic in the river: according to a study conducted by Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany, about 90% of the plastic in the oceans come from 10 rivers. One of them these 10 rivers is Mekong.

And just to touch base on this, there are 8.3 billion tons of plastic trash in the world that we live in today. In the ocean, its causing acidification, bleaching the corals and killing marine life.

For the next 2 days, I travelled to some islands and villages along the Mekong. Most of the people were subsistence farmers, growing fruits and catching small fishes for a living. 

Life seemed so simple, peaceful and so close to the nature.

But then, wherever I turned,  I saw plastics.

Even for safeguarding their fruits, they covered them with tiny plastic jackets - the same that would soon end up in the river.

Last week, the Mekong River Commission - the governing body of entire Mekong river (which flows through 5 countries), released a statement saying it was working on an initiative to go plastic- free. But this was the commission's office in Laos - faraway from the Mekong Delta.

As I took my last ride over the river, I felt sad.
It had been a dream for years to see Mekong - a river that feeds millions of people with its fish stock, besides helping nations prosper with its inland waterways and its hydelpower potential. 

This river needs to clean, free of plastic and not carry plastic to the oceans.

The communities - both locals and the tourists - need a campaign to tell them of the mountains of  plastic trash Mekong was creating, causing the ocean acidification.

After all, a healthy river is our biggest asset and its our responsibility to preserve its health.

Embarrassing, Unjust, Tyrannical: Women Climate Warriors on Trump Quitting Paris Agreement

The worst fear has just come true: US President Donald Trump has just announced that he will make US abandon the historic climate deal - the Paris Agreement - because 1) he thinks the agreement is bad for American economy and 2) It was something he had promised to do during his election campaign.
 
  

A snapshot of the infamous California drought that affected millions. Credit : LA Times

As expected, reactions are pouring out from all corners of the world. Here is a compilation of some of the world's most vocal Women climate leaders:

Lidy Nacpil, Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development
"... a U.S. pull-out reveals utter disregard for the fate of humanity in favor of continued hegemony of U.S. elites and big corporate interests. Not to mention a tyrannical refusal to accept scientific findings."

Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and Environment, India
Climate change is a global challenge. The US cannot continue to keep the world hostage. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement would mean that with 5 per cent of the world population, the US will continue to jeopardise the remaining 95 per cent. Countries need to hold the US accountable for decisions that have a global impact,” said Narain.

 Rachel Smolker, BiofuelWatch USA
 "I am ashamed ... hope our allies will let their voices be heard at U.S. embassies - to both isolate Donald Trump and his ilk - and apply pressure on the U.S. to step up and take responsibility for real and equitable solutions to the escalating climate catastrophe."

In Photos: A Day With Rural India's Barefoot Radio Producers

Last summer, in a tiny town called Orccha in central India, I met Ekta, Gauri and Kausalya - three women working for a community radio station called 'Radio Bundelkhand'. The radio station, now in its 8th year, serves farmers in about a dozen villages within a radius of about 70 km.

For two days, I followed these three women as they traveled around villages, interviewing farmers, recording their stories and later, broadcasting content that they created just for these farming community. Here are 10 photographs that describe the journey I took along with these barefoot journalists and their amazing audience.

1. It was a very hot summer day with the mercury hitting almost 40 degree Celsius. We had hired a car, so the journey was relatively easier. 

But on a normal day, the reporters travel in an auto rickshaw (also known as Tuk Tuk to some) from their office in Orchha to the entrance of a village. From their, its a long walk to the inside of the village.With them they carry a voice recorder, a notebook and, often a radio which they play for the entertainment of the villagers, many of whom do not have the money to buy a radio.

2015: The Year That It Was

 How was 2015? Sharing here a few leaves out of my diary that's full of memories - of traveling and story-telling.

January

With Village Women who Fight Traffickers

The first trip of the year took me to the villages of Lambadi people (a Nomadic tribe) in Mahabubnagar district of Telangana. Not so long ago, these villages were a notorious hub for sale and trafficking of baby girls. But today, local women are ensuring that every girl goes to school. They also fighting against child labor and child marriage. Here you can read their inspiring story - Not Without Our Daughters: Lambada Women Fight Infanticide and Child Trafficking.

February

Telling stories of India’s Development Refugees

In February, I met men, women and children of Koya and Konda – primitive forest tribes living in India’s Eastern Ghat mountain. Soon, thousands of them will become refugees as a mega dam is coming up in their homeland. Here is the link to their story  'Development refugees' resist Indian dam

But even as uncertainty is looming large over their future, the tribal community is learning skills that will keep them food-secure even in the most adverse situation. Here you can read that story "In the Shadow of Displacement, Forest Tribes Look to Sustainable Farming"

COP21 : What can it do for Rina - a climate change refugee?

21st UNFCCC Conference of the Parties or COP21 has just begun. Its THE most important climate summit of our lifetime where we expect the world to strike a climate deal - one that will be "gender responsive". On the occasion, I am running a 2-week blog campaign, connecting the dots among COP21, Climate Change and Gender

 Rina Dash is an undocumented migrant worker in New Delhi. In 2008, she came here from Satkhira district of Bangladesh. There was a cyclone she says, and it destroyed her home and flooded her little farm she says. It was super cyclone Sidr, I learned - a disaster that killed over 3000 people.

After the flood water went down, nothing could be grown on the far, says Rina. So, her husband suggested that they migrate to New Delhi . 

Why Delhi? "Because we heard thee was plenty of jobs."
But when they came here, her husband found a job of a rickshaw puller. Rina, when I met her, was a janitor. She was paid as  a daily wager. They live in a juggi - a shack made of tarpaulin sheet.

Memories of a climate refugee: Rina shows the photos of her relatives who died in the cyclone. She requested me not to show her face as this could lead to her deportation as an illegal migrant

Across New Delhi, there are thousands of  undocumented migrant workers like Rina

COP21: Can it help a HIV Positive Bimla?

21st UNFCCC Conference of the Parties or COP21 has just begun. Its THE most important climate summit of our lifetime where we expect the world to strike a climate deal - one that will be "gender responsive". On the occasion, I am running a 2-week blog campaign, connecting the dots among COP21, Climate Change and Gender. 


It's 2nd day of COP21. It's also World AIDS Day.  Let me bring you the story of Bimla - a young woman from Machalipatnam - a coastal town in southern India. Barely 25 year old, Bimla is a widow and lives with HIV.

What is the connection between  Bimla and COP21 or Climate Change? To understand that, you need to hear how Bimla got the virus. She was infected by her husband - a farmer who lost his farm to a cyclone in 2010 ( That cyclone - cyclone Laila, was actually one of the 60 cyclones that their state has seen in past 4 decades),

COP 21: Can it ease the burden of Durga?

21st UNFCCC Conference of the Parties or COP21 has just begun. Its THE most important climate summit of our lifetime where we expect the world to strike a climate deal - one that will be "gender responsive". On the occasion, beginning from today, I am running a 2-week blog campaign, connecting the dots among COP21, Climate Change and Gender. 


I just met Durga Rajak in Kathamndu - the capital of Nepal. She is in her early forties and runs a roadside eatery with her husband. The most popular dish in their eatery is Choila - spicy, fried duck meat served hot with flattened rice which sells for 50 Nepali rupees (about $40 cent) a plate. It's not a lot of money since a kg of meat costs 650 rupees ($6) , so, Durga always kept the expenses low by working extra hard such as  buying produces from local growers and carrying things on her motorbike, instead of employing a person.

But these days, Durga is struggling. Normally, she uses Liquefied Petroleum Gas or "cooking gas". But since the end of September, cooking gas - besides petrol and diesel -has become hard to find. So, she is now using stoves that run on kerosene. Sometimes, when kerosene is unavailable, Durga uses diesel (which she buys in the black market) in her stove.

 Its very risky and  every time she lights the stove, Durga fears a blast.

But its a risk she must take. Only a few months ago, in April, Kathmandu was hit by a massive earthquake.At that time, Durga had to close her eatery for several weeks. She had also spent nearly a month under the open sky, on little little food and water. Today she is determined to keep her business running, come whatever may. "To be dependent on others is tough," she says.

But currently she is dependent on a number of people for her survival: the cooking gas distributors, the petrol& diesel stations and also the black marketeers. How long could she go on?  She was quiet, but I could sense her answer: "as long as I can."

A thought came in my mind as I heard her story: what would have happened if Durga had a stove that ran on solar energy?

Food Waste : Writing On The Wall Just Got Bigger

This week began with some exciting news :the UN just fed some world leaders trash and that it was great.

Curious?

Ok, here is how it happened: In New York, Ban-ki-Moon , the UN Secretary General, hosted for 30 of his guests  - comprising presidents, prime ministers and royals - a lunch that was made of  food waste.

In plain words, each dish of each course on the menu - from appetizer to dessert - was made of material that was considered waste and would have ended in a trash bin.

The salad on the lunch was made from unwanted vegetable scraps, stalks and outer leaves salvaged from the waste of big food producers.

There were burgers and fries and these were made of thrown away vegetables including ends of cucumber thrown out by pickle makers. They also used 'cow corn' - corn that are considered too hard for human consumption and so are fed to cows instead.

That is not all. The bread on the lunch table was baked from

Indian Women Adapting to Climate Change: 10 Photos You Will Like

At least 80% of my stories are on rural communities. I go to faraway hills, nomad hamlets and fishing villages and, I am always searching for signs where women in these most unheard communities are using technology for a better life. What I find is always amazing:  women, most of them with little or no education, are using technology to fight for their rights, health, freedom and an improved livelihood. Below are 10 photos of how women in villages are using technology to adapt to climate change.

Tracking the weather

 As the climate becomes more erratic every passing day, rural communities are finding it increasingly tough to rely on their traditional knowledge of weather. So, they are now learning to monitor it. In this photo, taken in Medak district of southern India, women of a village are using a mini weather station. Here, they track the movement of wind, cloud and measure temperature and rainfall - everything that will later help them plan their farming activities.

 Using mobile phone technology

 Mobile phones are immensely popular in India. But these women are using mobile phones  in the smartest way possible: sharing information on weather, availability of seeds, fertilizer, soil testing facilities and so on.

Water water everywhere: Not a farmer to spot!

I just returned from the World Water Week in Stockholm, the Swedish capital.

Organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the week-long event was focusing on Water and it's intricate and crucial link to development worldwide. It was, as I learned, the 25th year of the event.

The Prime Minister of Sweden addressing the participants at the inaugural session of the World Water Week.

As you would expect in a global event like this, there were participants from different walks of development and water: scientists, finance experts, engineers, political leaders and activists and media personnel like me. There were talks of innovation, technology, finance, aid, collaboration, policy, regulation, transparency and so on. We also heard some country heads talk about some of the burning issues of our time: climate change, disasters, conflict and the migrant influx.

But there was something crucial that was missing: the voice of the farmer. And it came as a surprise - of a rather shocking nature. After all, this was an event discussing water and it's role in the world's development, especially the Sustainable Development Goals which are soon to replace the Millennium Development Goals.

Food production and food security are always the key to  a sustainable world. And everyone was talking of this - except the food grower himself. Irony much?

Youth Climate Leadership: Lets Also Mind the Sharks

A couple of weeks back, I was in Singapore's United World College of South East Asia, listening to a roomful of young men and women talking passionately about climate change. As they spoke, a sharp, almost painful, thought struck my mind: "are we serious about transformative leadership here, or, is this just another ritualistic act?"

Now, why did I think of this? A little background might help. 

The youths I heard were from the ASEAN member states (If you didn't know already, these are Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar) and they were here to take part in ASEAN Power Shift 2015 - a 3-day  training workshop on climate change and the  upcoming Paris Climate Conference (COP 21).

Youths at ASEAN Power Shift 2015. Photo credit: Young NTUC

It was a pretty diverse group:: some were graduate students in a university while others were still in junior high schools. Some already had a lot of knowledge about climate change and erratic weather, while others only had a faint idea of what it might be. And, as I found out later, only about half of  them lived in cities, with 24x7 internet access while  the other half lived in the provinces with little or no access to digital connectivity. 

Yet here they were - bound by a common thread: concern for a fast degrading environment in their respective countries and a strong wish to set it right. 

In Photos: Life After 10 Years of Tsunami - Part 1

It's been 10 years since the devastating Asian Tsunami happened. How have things changed on the ground since then, especially for those who bore the brunt of that disaster? To find the answer, I recently visited some villages along the east coast of India. Shared here are few glimpses of life I saw there.


 And now there's another shrine - The Tsunami Temple

The Tsunami in 2004 took a lot - lives, homes and assets included - but also gave something. This structure, for example, emerged out of  the sea  next to the famous shore temple of Mahabalipuram  and quickly gained popularity as the Tsunami Temple. Natarajan, a tourist guide told me, 'this is our latest attraction'  and then, "but you can't go there. It's too slippery".   Now, that's a fitting gift of a disaster!

"Tourism matters, tourists matter, we don't"

Prabhakar Sharma sells souvenirs on the beach. After the Tsunami in 2004, the government was quick to restore the Shore Temple of Mahabalipuram, he said. But,  for the owners of over 100 makeshift shops that were also destroyed by the tsunami, there hasn't been any compensation. A bitter Sharma told me this : "The govt invested well into restoring the temple and the facilities for the tourists. But we, the beach traders who sustain the tourists interests, were left to lick our  own wounds. We just didn't matter"

           A new trail of disasters

There is an alarming rate of erosion along the coast and every village has at least half a dozen houses that are in various stages of destruction.

They said this: Take away messages from CBDCOP12

The 12th conference of the parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (or CBD COP 12) began here in Pyeongchang, South Korea on 5th of October. Since then, I have met and had exclusive interviews with several leaders here. Each of them impressed me with their answers and especially their patience in explaining complicated issues in the most simple terms. You can read the news articles that I filed from the convention on the IPS news site. Sharing  here, below, are some of the statements from each of these leaders that I am calling my take home messages.

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias – Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

“We now know what we need to do to prevent biodiversity loss and invasive species. We need to integrate biodiversity into our sustainable development.”


Ibrahim Thiaw – Deputy Director, UN Environmental Program (UNEP) 

"Hope that the member countries would really commit themselves to achieve the Aichi targets. It is a collective commitment that needs to be made. If you go back and don’t match your words with action at the national level, it’s not going to work"

Ocean Acidification: Do We Give a Fish?

This week – and the next week – I am in Pyeong Chang – a mountain town in the Republic of Korea, covering the 12th Conference of Parties on Biological Diversity (CBD COP). Posting here my views on what’s happening at the venue.  You can also read my news articles from the COP here.

Two years ago, one morning I stood on the beach of  Calangute – a coastal town in western India’s Goa and watched rows of fishing boats returning to the shore. Each of these boats had, wrapped in a large net, the night’s harvest from the ocean. As the fishermen emptied their nets, the sand was instantly covered with a silver carpet of thousands of fish. ‘Blessed wealth of a benevolent sea god’– I remembered whispering to myself.

Today, I am reading a UN scientific report that shows that the blessing and wealth of the ocean is under severe threats, thanks to a rapidly rising level of acidification of the ocean water.

Building climate resilience: Unlock the technology

In 2012, I went to Inner Mongolia to see how local nomadic communities were fighting an advancing desert. I was very fascinated to see how they were building a green wall in the middle of a sandy land. It was then that I heard an expert from the United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification (UNCCD) say, ‘many countries, especially India, have so much of knowledge and technology in their labs. But little of that is reaching the people on the ground. We need to make that happen.”

Putting life back in lifeless sand. In Inner Mongolia, scientists and locals have worked hand in hand to make this miracle happen.

Two year later, today, at the 4th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, I heard many experts expressing the same view again – a logical, practical and extremely timely expression.

One of them was Rajib Shaw, a professor of disaster and risk management at Kyoto University. 

Gender-Inclusive Adaptation: Vanuatu Shows the Way

Have you ever been to, or, if you pardon my saying so, even heard of Vanuatu? I honestly hadn’t and actually had to search Wikipedia for help! And this is what I found: it’s a very small country on the pacific coast, next to Fiji and New Guinea. The population of the entire country is just 250,000 – which is smaller than some of our cities.

It was from this tiny, hard-to-find-on-the-map island nation that we heard one of the most powerful pieces of information on the 1st day of the 4th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Kuala Lumpur (APAN2014): the country is following a 50% reservation for women policy when it comes to negotiating climate change and also implementing climate change adaptation projects.
 

An areal view of Vanuatu

I was at a session on “gender sensitive adaptation” in Johar Keda auditorium of the Putra World Trade Center where the forum is taking place.

World Environment Day: Can You Feel the Pain of an Islander?

"Everyone talks about disasters and rescues. Everyone has a plan, except us. Where shall we go? We have nowhere to escape" - Leeza, a resident of Malé

I met Leeza, a journalist with a local TV station in Malé , a year ago. We were in Bangkok, attending a media workshop organized for journalists who cover trauma and crisis. During the event, each one of us narrated one of the most traumatic event in our journalistic career - one that left its scar on our mind and heart. When it came to Leeza, it was the 2004 tsunami. People died, properties were lost and as a journalist she sat through hours of that footage, feeling numb. "The numbness didn't come from seeing the destruction, it came from the realization that this is what awaits each one of us. That if a disaster strikes, we have nowhere to go. We just stay here and die,"- said Leeza, tears welling in her eyes. We all were tearful as well. We felt that pain, piercing right through our heart.

Aerial view of Maldives. Credit:mainaurmrsshukla

A year has gone by since then. The world has witnessed quite a few natural disasters since then: earthquakes, bush fire, droughts, floods. In my own country, we have seen a devastating cloudburst and a series of cyclones. In each of these disasters, many lives were lost, but many were also saved. But the number of deaths were always the highest in places where people were surrounded by nothing but water. Typhoon Hayan in the Philippines was one example that claimed over 5000 lives(including relatives of one of my very close friend Paulina who lives in Tacloban). Between reading and writing about them, one voice came back like a wave of stormy water and hitting me, "where will we go?"

Any Time Water - Idea worth spreading

Any Time Water  is a machine that dispenses clean water 24X7 at very low cost. Now that's the kind of  technology we need , right now.

It's only mid - April, but Hyderabad is reeling under a heat wave with the mercury hitting  39 degree celcius. And, adding to the  woes of  locals is an acute shortage of water. How acute is the shortage? Consider this: the government supplies water to every house premise for 1 hour, 3 times a week. Considering every house  has 3-4 apartments which means 3-4 families, this 1-hour of water supply, when distributed among the families, gives only enough water to drink.

And thats what everyone does: store and save the water for drinking.

For the rest - bathing, washing clothes, homes, utensils, water plants, if you have any and bathing pets - you either dig a bore well, or buy from private water suppliers.  In either case, the water either has high level of alkaline or fluoride. In fact, the water supplied by private tankers (they charge INR 400 for about 2000 liters) you don't know where they are bringing it from and how polluted it is. Don't want it? Then sit at home and sulk. Nobody gives a damn!

'Nobody cares.' Well, this is pretty much what I always felt, until I heard of a village not very far from here getting Any time Water.
Now, everyone knows of Any Time Money. But Any Time Water? Well, in a nutshell, its a machine that dispenses water, any time you want!

Here is how it  actually works:

Migration: Prevention Is Always Better than Cure

It is International Migrants day and since morning, a series of faces have been passing before my eyes. These are faces of women whom I have met in recent times and found, they were all victims of climate change. It affected each of them in a different way, but at the end of the day, uprooted them from their homes and turned them into migrants with an uncertain future.

Let me share the stories of five of them.

Akshaya, Hyderabad - Migrant, because there was no WATER.

Akshaya Gaud is 24 and a commercial sex worker. She migrated from Adilabad - a district  in Andhra Pradesh state of southern India that has been severely affected by consecutive droughts. Akshaya migrated 2 years ago to Hyderabad because there was no water. All the ponds dried and ground water level depleted so much, borewells could not produce any water. When I interviewed her for my story 'Drought drives rural Indian women into city sex trade' , she said this: “The last time I visited my home, there was hardly enough water to drink. When I returned, I brought back a bundle of unwashed clothes with me because there was no water to wash them. How can we live like this?”