News stories by Manipadma Jena

NAIROBI & BHUBANESWAR, July 10 (IPS) - The global population is aging at a time when heat exposure is rising due to climate change. Extreme heat can be deadly for older populations given their reduced ability to regulate body temperature. Already there has been an 85 percent increase since 1990 in annual heat-related deaths of adults aged above 65, driven by both warming trends and fast-growing older populations.

SEVILLE & BHUBANESWAR, July 2 (IPS) - While droughts creep in stealthily, their impacts are often more devastating and far-reaching than any other disaster. Inter-community conflict, extremist violence, and violence and injustice against vulnerable girls and women happen at the intersection of climate-induced droughts and drought-impoverished communities.

BHUBANESWAR/AHMEDABAD, India, Jun 26 (IPS) - As Deviben Dhaundhaliya, 45, a streetside seller of artificial jewelry, waits for her husband Devabhai to arrive and help her shift their iron-frame mobile ‘shop’ to the Bhadra Fort open-air marketplace in Ahmedabad city, she tells of how “as heat increased, my wares started melting under the direct exposure to the sun, or they got discolored.”

BHUBANESWAR, India,, May 29 (IPS) - While a rise in temperature brings an uncertain future for the olive ridley sea turtles, the efforts of international conservation organizations that ban the trade in turtle meat, leather, and shells; the Indian government; coast guards; and village volunteers, including fishermen, have made a huge difference in ensuring their continued existence. Even young village children are eager to do their bit to make sure the turtles survive.In November,  tens of thousands of male olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) start congregating on just five kilometers of nearshore in Odisha in eastern India. They wait for the females of the species to arrive.

BHUBANESWAR, India, Aug 02 (IPS) - “Daily squabbles at the lone water point in Bhubaneswar’s slums, where hundreds of households depended on this single non-potable water source, have now receded into the past,” says Aparna Khuntia, a member of a large cohort of water volunteers who have played an important enabling role in ensuring households in the eastern India city now have their own on-premises potable running tap water available all 24 hours.

SHILLONG & BHUBANESWAR, India, Jun 25 (IPS) - As the school lunch bell goes off, 40 eager little bodies—41 if you count the school dog—burst out onto the veranda. Awaiting them are a stack of steel platters, into which will be ladled a nutritious and delicious lunch, all of it indigenous cuisine.

AHMEDABAD, India, Mar 18 (IPS) - Women in Ahmedabad slums work from home at tailoring, embroidery, kite-making, snack-making, or running grocery shops, micro-retailing vegetables and flowers, with little respite from the brutal heat waves that have been steadily worsening. Until now…Seema Mali is desperate. She has no defences against this changing climate’s brutal heat. Mali makes fresh flower garland the whole year, but her summer income has been plummeting by 30 percent over the last 8–10 years due to the extreme heat.

PURI, India, Nov 07 (IPS) - For more than 33 years, a group of strong-willed women from the village of Tandahara, India have kept their homes and village safe and plan to continue despite the unrelenting impacts of increasingly severe monsoons.

The sun is high in the noon sky—humidity unrelenting at 95 percent in this Indian sea-coast village. The monsoon has been deficient; rice paddies are yellowing on the edges from the salty surf misting in on them. Waves now break barely 200 metres from the farms and homes.

BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, Aug 15 (IPS) - As torrential rains, cloudbursts, floods, and landslides continue to wreak colossal damage and claim lives in Himachal Pradesh, India’s Himalayan foothill provinces. The question everyone is asking is: why is this happening?

New Delhi, Jul 03 (IPS) - Speaking to IPS about the importance of biodiversity and nature's contributions to people, Dr Anne Larigauderie, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), stressed the importance of moving from knowledge and policy silos to a more integrated approach to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially those related to food, water, health, climate change, and energy, which can only be achieved together with the two goals related to biodiversity.