Conflict/Dispossession
Bill Laurance writes: An unprecedented spate of road building is happening now, with around 25 million kilometres of new paved roads expected by 2050. An ambitious new study that mapped all roads globally has found that roads have split the Earth’s land surface into 600,000 fragments, most of them too tiny to support significant wildlife….
Read More about The global road-building explosion is shattering nature
Conflict/Dispossession
From The New York Times: …It is impossible to imagine a world without global connections: They have always existed, and no place has escaped their formative influence. But this does not mean that there is any inherent merit in interconnectedness, which has always been accompanied by violence, deepening inequalities and the large-scale destruction of communities….
Read More about Amitav Ghosh: What nutmeg can tell us about globalisation
CLIMATE CRISIS
Common Dreams reports: For the third year in a row, the world experienced its warmest year ever recorded. In 2016, a total of 22 nations set all-time records for their hottest ever temperatures. This breaks the record of eighteen all-time heat records in 2010 for the greatest number of such records set in one year….
Read More about 2014 was hottest year ever recorded. Then it was 2015. Now it’s 2016.
Conflict/Dispossession
G. Seetharaman reports: Activists say one of the biggest hurdles for FRA is that even states like Maharashtra, among the better performers, and Odisha are introducing policies which will help the forest department retain control of forest resources through joint forest management committees or similar bodies, which will dilute the powers of the gram sabha….
Read More about Why the Forest Rights Act is yet to achieve major milestones
Education/Awareness
The final stages of capitalism, Marx predicted, would be marked by global capital being unable to expand and generate profits at former levels. Capitalists would begin to consume the government along with the physical and social structures that sustained them. These assaults would destroy the host. This final stage of capitalism is what Trump represents….
Read More about Richard Heinberg: The Peak Oil President?
Jemima Rohekar
Conserve/Resist
Jemima Rohekar writes: So secluded is Silent Valley that there is no written record of any human habitation in its core area. It is also the site of the first and most bitterly fought ‘environment vs development’ debate in India. Silent Valley reinforces the fact that forests and their resident biodiversity are our greatest wealth….
Read More about Sounds of silence: a forest that survived ‘development’
Economy
Gail Tverberg writes: Underlying problems are sufficiently severe that we seem to be headed for a crisis far worse than 2008. Our fundamental problem is that neither high nor low energy prices are now able to keep the world economy operating as we’d like it to. Increased debt can’t seem to fix the problem either….
Read More about 2017: The year when the world economy starts coming apartALTERNATIVES
T. Hanumantha Rao, irrigation engineering expert and the brain behind a participative method of water management based on his ‘Four Waters’ concept, passed away on Sunday. The Four Waters concept, explained in this video, brought rich benefits to Rajasthan, where even drought-affected areas improved over the years. Several other states are actively pursuing his recommendations….
Read More about Tribute: T. Hanumantha Rao, champion of water management alternatives
Economy
A new study released by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum meeting shows that just 57 billionaires in India now have same wealth ($ 216 billion) as that of the bottom 70 per cent population of the country. Globally, just 8 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 per cent….
Read More about India’s richest 1% now own 58% of the country’s total wealth
Conserve/Resist
Alexei Yablokov, the towering grandfather of Russian ecology who worked to unmask Cold War nuclear dumping practices in the Arctic region, died in Moscow last week. Yablokov commanded a broad environmental and political mandate in Russia, founded Russia’s branch of Greenpeace and was the leader of the Green Russia faction of the Yabloko opposition party….
Read More about Tribute: Alexei Yablokov, grandfather of Russian environmentalism
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ALTERNATIVES
Gandhi and Kumarappa shared an objective of building a non-violent social and economic order that promoted equity and justice for all. Their understanding led them to conclude that “the only path to true democracy in political life, and to peace among nations” was a decentralised economic and political system where, necessarily, the “rewards were moderate”….
Read More about Defying capitalism and socialism, Kumarappa and Gandhi had imagined a decentralised Indian economy
Gautam Adani with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Conflict/Dispossession
Amit Bhardwaj reports: The Jharkhand Government wants thousands of farmers to give up their multi-crop fertile lands for the Adani power plant. The plant will sell its entire electricity produce to Bangladesh. “They’ve used 1932 land records to show that a majority of the land here is not being used for agriculture,” said Vidya Devi….
Read More about Adani Power Vs The People Of Jharkhand
CLIMATE CRISIS
Suzanne Goldenberg reports: The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests. They range from investor-owned firms –household names such as Exxon and BP– to state-owned firms….
Read More about Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions
Food/Farming
Milind Murugkar writes: ‘Why doesn’t the informal sector, supposedly badly hit by demonetisation, protest or scream in pain?’. Defenders of demonetisation often pose this question. If you want an answer to the question, please listen to Sachin Jadhav. His story takes us through the long chain of economic loss and suffering of the rural population….
Read More about Demonetisation and the silent suffering of Bharat
CLIMATE CRISIS
As 2017 dawns, in a great many ways, modern industrial civilization has flung itself forward into a darkness where no stars offer guidance and no echoes tell what lies ahead… We’re not discussing the end of the world; events like those that can be found repeated many times in the histories of other failing civilizations….
Read More about John Michael Greer: A sneak preview of the year 2017
Development/Growth
What lies ahead for the economy this year? Will there be a global economic collapse as predicted by many or will the early positive signs in stock markets around the world continue? While focused on the U.S., this compilation by Daisy Luther of forecasts by 12 leading experts has implications for the entire global economy….
Read More about What 12’financial experts predict for the economy in 2017
Food/Farming
Samar writes: Indebtedness was behind 38.7% of farmer suicides in 2015; the corresponding figure for the same head in overall suicides in India is a mere 3.3%. Nearly 80% of those who killed themselves because of indebtedness had taken loans from “Financial Institutions like Bank/Registered Micro Financial Institutions”, and a mere 302 from “Money Lenders”….
Read More about Report: Farmer suicides spiked by 42% in 2015; debt leading causeUncategorised
The harsh realities of burning vast quantities of coal in India with very lax pollution control measures are well described by a news article in The Economic Times. With a large number of coal power plants being additionally planned to be built, the pollution impacts on our communities, as amply demonstrated in the…
Read More about Pollution deadline missed: What next for India’s dirty power plants?
Conflict/Dispossession
Gabriel Popkin reports: To preserve a natural landscape, kick people out. This “guns and fences” paradigm of conservation relies on drastically restricting local people’s activities—or even displacing them altogether. Today, it has spread around the world, with disastrous consequences for communities. But in many cases, it may be misguided, argue a growing chorus of experts….
Read More about The best way to protect the world’s forests? Keep people in them
