Ecologise - The 21st century's converging crises and alternative pathways

Food/Farming

Ignored health risks, bungled pilot projects, bonanza for Dutch firm: Modi Govt. forces fortified rice on poor

26th May 2023

Modi government rushed with its plan to supply fortified rice despite internal and external expert warnings on the adverse effects of feeding it to people, particularly children. Niti Aayog reviewed the pilot studies in seven districts across India only after the government’s orders to distribute fortified rice had already been passed. It found that all of them were fundamentally flawed and had failed. The report was never made public while the government continues to push fortified rice.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Partially burned and standing trees called snags loom over a site where researchers from the John T Harrington Forestry Research Center are conducting reforestation experiments at Deer Lake Mesa in Cimarron, New Mexico on August 17, 2021.

[File: Reuters/Adria Malcolm]

We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

11th May 2023

Apocalypse investors are pushing fake climate solutions on us that are making climate change worse.

The Avocados of Wrath

7th May 2023

Per capita consumption of avocados has kept on growing in the importing countries, driven by intense marketing campaigns promoting the nutritional benefits of this food. GRAIN reports on how the industrial agribusiness model exploits small- and medium-sized growers, forces them to take on all the risk and also bear the burden of environmental externalities. Meanwhile, big agribusiness companies and their investors are largely shielded from the public health and environmental impacts.

A pastoralist looks at Hasdeo’s Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB) mine that has lead to severe environmental and social issues. Residents of Hasdeo region fear their land meeting the same fate as its adjacent Korba, a critically polluted area.

Photo by Vaishnavi Suresh/PEP Collective

On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India

24th March 2023

21st March is marked as International Forests Day: A brief look at the state of Forests and Forest Rights in India today.

Author (with spectacles) at Narmada Sangharsh Yatra (Struggle Journey), 1990

Photo by Shailendra Yashwant

It did not stop the dam, but is it a failure?

23rd February 2023

The many faces of India’s Narmada movement: Since the mid-1980s, the Narmada valley has also been the site of one of Independent India’s most iconic and globally well-known people’s movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement). For the last nearly 40 years, this movement has raised questions about and tried to stop, a series of mega-dams along the river and its tributaries.

Joshimath Crisis is a Warning from the Himalayas

6th February 2023

A development model based on local conditions and aspirations is necessary. The current crisis in Joshimath is the consequence of choosing economics over ecology or the ecosystem. It was scripted from the time we opted for a development model that instigated the open plunder of natural resources.

Conserve/Resist

Locals protest at Barsu Solgaon of the Rajapur block in Ratnagiri. Photo: Twitter@aviuv

Protests against Ratnagiri Refinery: Skeletons in the Development Closet

19th May 2023

Protests are raging in the Konkan region of Maharashtra against the government’s proposed refinery project in Ratnagiri. Hundreds have been arrested so far. Protesting locals have alleged unprecedented police action. While not being reported much in the mainstream media, locals continue to build their resistance with greater strength. Read more to find out why this is happening?

How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart

4th May 2023

What’s wrong with the popular Miyawaki method of ecological restoration?

P.V. Satheesh, the Original Millets Man of India

22nd March 2023

The founder of Deccan Development Society not only popularised millets but also worked for agro-biodiversity, food sovereignty, women’s empowerment, Dalit rights, social justice and local knowledge systems.

How Nepal Regenerated its Forests: Communities know their Forests Best

21st February 2023

After relinquishing control of forests to the villages that depend on them, forest cover in Nepal nearly doubled.

Paul Kingsnorth: The Great Unsettling

3rd February 2023

There is no such thing as a perfect society, and anyone who tries to build one will either go mad or become a tyrant. Humans are fallen, or just natural, and both of those words are synonyms for ‘imperfect’. What is ‘perfection’ anyway? It is a concept designed by a part of the modern human mind – the part that likes clean lines, easy answers, plots that end by neatly tying up all the threads. The quest for perfection is a quest for homogeneity and control, and it leads to the gulag and the guillotine, the death camp and the holy war. Even if we could agree on what perfection amounted to, we would none of us be equipped to build it.

Culture/Cognition

What will be the history of India without the history of its plant life?

17th May 2023

The history of plant life, records of its settlement on land as well as its death and evacuation from these spaces, a census of plants and trees — all these constitute our national history, not only the life of kings, queens and the famous.

[WATCH] We are living in a deluded world: Interview with Iain McGilchrist

9th May 2023

Dr. Iain McGilchrsit talks about the left-brain right-brain divide, culture and cognition in the West, metaphysics, philosophy and how science and technology affect our society.

Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation

16th May 2020

For years, normality has been stretched nearly to breaking-point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that it’s snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids, to see what we might weave from them?…

How psychedelics helped to shape Extinction Rebellion

23rd January 2020

From Emerge: Gail Bradbrook, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, writes about her experiences with psychedelic plants, which she says altered her worldview so radically as to set her on her current path to initiate social change. Bradbrook helped found, and continues to play a key role in this global movement for systemic change….

As animals and plants go extinct, languages die off too

11th January 2020

From Vice.com: Just like an animal species, our languages evolved in the context of the environments that surrounded them. When we change those environments, we threaten much more than just the physical living things that thrive there. In the parts of the world where biodiversity is most at risk, words and phrases also face extinction….