Stories written by Keya Acharya
A journalist with over 20 years of experience in in-depth writing and researching environment and development issues in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Keya has travelled widely, covering assignments in various areas of the world. Her research has included climate change, urban solid waste management, rural alternative energy systems, implementation of laws on industrial hazardous wastes, human rights, ecotourism, wildlife issues, transgenic cotton, corruption and environment, population and gender, e-governance, agribiotech and forests and encroachments, among other topics. Keya is vice chair of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India, and has organised several media-training workshops, convened international media meetings and undertaken media study tours. Keya has won several research and media fellowships and is the recipient of the Press Institute’s award for Excellence in Human Development Reporting; the Prem Bhatia Award for Environmental Reporting, and the Green Globe Foundation award for Outstanding Media Contribution by a Media Individual. Keya has also conducted development journalism studies as visiting faculty, chaired media and international conference panels, and edited ‘The Green Pen’, an anthology of essays on environmental journalism, the first of its kind in South Asia, featuring the region's most prominent and respected environmental journalists. | Web

INDIA: 'City of Joy' Turns Model for Street Food Hygiene

Ranjini Gupta who works with the urban development department located in the heart of this bustling city snacks occasionally at the street food stalls nearby unmindful of food safety concerns.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Water Aplenty, Nor a Drop to Drink

Over 37.7 million people in India are affected by water-borne diseases due to contaminated drinking water supply and an estimated 1.5 million children die of diarrhoea each year, according to newly available statistics.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Villages Coopted Into Conservation

An initiative in India to introduce environmental conservation into village administration is making good headway in this rural district some 120 km from Bangalore, capital of southern Karnataka state.

Tiger in an Indian national park  Credit: NIC-India

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Tribal Rights Won’t Trouble Tiger Health

Walking through morning sunlight streaming through tall teak trees, A.K. Singh deputy conservator of forests, points out the ‘core, critical tiger habitat’ in the heart of this sprawling national park.

Entrance to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway  Credit: Mari Tefre /Svalbard Global Seed Vault

DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Wary of Doomsday Seed Vault

Agricultural non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in India and elsewhere are criticising the newly-opened Global Seed Vault (GSV) at Svalbard in Norway as fundamentally unjust in its objectives.

MEDIA-INDIA: Community Radio Stifled With Red Tape

Aspiring community radio operators from various parts of the country are complaining of long delays, frustration and bureaucratic red tape in obtaining licenses to run radio stations.

The Purple Frog, discovered in the Western Ghats in 2003, is testimony to the area&#39s rich biodiversity Credit: S.D. Biju

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Call To Save Major Biodiversity Hotspot

Environmentalists are reviving a plan to conserve the vast hilly, forested region running parallel to the west coast of peninsular India (western ghats), recognised as a global biodiversity hotspot.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Bird Watching to Save Habitats

A global banking and investment firm has taken an unusual route to corporate environmental responsibility: through the promotion of bird-watching.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: IT Hub In Acute Pollution Distress

Air pollution levels monitored by southern Karnataka state’s pollution control board (KSPCB) in this imploding southern Indian city - among Asia’s fastest-growing with an official population of 6.8 million people - have risen alarmingly over the last five years.

CULTURE: Indian Cinema – Fewer Bump and Grind Routines

The voluptuous heroine playing a coy hide-and-seek game of love around a tree in Indian cinema has produced derisive scoffs from Western audiences and sophisticated film buffs at home and abroad.

Solar energy has brought electricity to hundreds of thousands of thatch homes like this one in rural India with no carbon credits earned Credit: SELCO

CLIMATE CHANGE: Solar Energy Firm Says Carbon Credits Don’t Work

A small but successful solar energy company involved in rural electrification in India is complaining that the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) has been of no practical use to it.

HEALTH-INDIA: Prime Destination for Unethical Clinical Trials

Lack of regulation, accountability, low costs of operation and wide availability of target participants are reasons why multinational drug companies, researchers and institutions are increasingly basing their clinical trials in India.


Soliga tribals contemplate their bleak future in the BRT Hills, Karnataka state. Credit: Keya Acharya/IPS

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Tribals Distressed by Ban on Forest Gathering

The magical trill of the Nilgiri Whistling Thrush deep in the jungles of this remote southern Indian wildlife sanctuary is no comfort to its nearly 2,000 Soliga aboriginal tribal families.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Home Garbage Composting – Not Going to Pot

A variation of the age-old concept of composting household garbage, using cheap earthen pots, is turning into a runaway success in this fast-expanding metropolis of seven million people.

HEALTH-INDIA: Activists Will Continue to Push Boycott of Novartis

Activist groups campaigning for affordable drugs will continue their boycott campaign against Swiss pharma major Novartis AG, whose controversial petition arguing that Indian patent laws violated World Trade Organisation (WTO) provisions was rejected by the Madras High Court in southern Chennai city.

INDIA: Land Developers Eye Top Cultural Campus

Intellectuals in this famous university town founded by nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, 210 km from Kolkata, have taken the state government to court for defacing its unique cultural and environmental heritage in the name of development.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Indian Scientists Yet to Study Biodiversity Impacts

Scientists at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) based in this southern Indian city say that field studies of climate change impacts in India are currently non-existent, with no attention being given to them.

BIODIVERSITY-INDIA: Climate Change Skews Tribal Farming

A group of 25 leaders of the Soliga tribe in the isolated Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary in the hills of this southern Indian state sit in a semi-circle, discussing matters of concern to them.

BIODIVERSITY-INDIA: Lax Laws Worry Villagers, Activists

Five years after India enacted a seemingly pioneering, conservation-oriented law to preserve the country’s amazing diversity of flora and fauna, the Act remains bogged down by widespread protests from local communities, while civic groups protest the dilution of related environmental laws.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Converting Waste to Energy – Not So Green

A stream of protests has hit India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) for sanctioning municipal waste-to-energy (MWTE) projects that are collapsing under an avalanche of incombustible wastes.

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