Publications

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently (Sep 2021) released its revised Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) which have been made more stringent compared to their earlier guidelines. This raises the question whether India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) notified by the MoEFCC in 2009 are adequate and whether the revised WHO AQGs are relevant for India. The natural corollary to this is to identify the policies and actions required to strengthen the science of risk assessment and develop rational estimates of mortality and morbidity attributed to air pollution amongst the population in India. These issues have been examined in the NIAS Policy Brief to recommend the way forward.

The need to protect the geological heritage by introducing legislation

This study presented two case studies—the Jigokudani Monkey Park, Japan, and the Telaga Warna Nature Recreational Park, Indonesia—where the authors provided quantitative assessments of people’s motivations for visiting managed (monkey parks) and unmanaged (incidental) monkey tourism sites. They further showed that management regimes, socio-demographic attributes, previous experience of interactions with macaques, and feeding them play a role in people’s desire to visit macaque tourism sites.

The present work reports the actual ground conditions prevalent at a fish landing center in Northern Odisha, namely, Talsari in the aftermath of the cyclone “Yaas”, which made landfall on May 26th, 2021. The coastal vulnerability and the impacts of the cyclone are discussed.