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ALTERNATIVES

How do you ‘degrow’ an economy, without causing chaos?

29th May 2017

Jonathan Rutherford writes: Reducing societal consumption –degrowing the economy– need not necessarily result in chaotic economic breakdown. This is indeed an inevitable outcome within our present economic system, but possibly not others. What then would be required to contract the economy, in an orderly and fair way? A possible answer, from the ‘Simpler Way’ perspective….

A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers

Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson

Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coal

27th May 2017

Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….

V. Govindankutty at the Naubad karez, an ancient engineering marve

K.V.S.Giri

How Bidar beat back the drought

25th May 2017

From The Hindu: Bidar’s Naubad karez, or tunnel wells, are an ancient engineering marvel. It’s a complex system, which works inversely underground to leverage gravity — that is, the plateau’s natural gradient ascends from the mouth to the mother well but the tunnel underneath has been cut to descend from the mother well to the mouth….

Siddharth at his thatched-roof home at Netrampakkam

Shriya Mohan

Point of no return: How a bunch of city-dwellers got back to the basics

22nd May 2017

From The Hindu: Ten years ago Siddharth, an IIT-IIM alumnus based in Chennai, put the brakes on his corporate career, that of vice-president for a technology R&D firm. He was 35 when he picked up a shovel to become an organic farmer instead. Not a landlord who employs labour but, quite literally, a subsistence farmer….

Earthbag Diaries 3: Building our brand new home, one bag at a time

Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The third installment in a series of four….

A view of Suman Sangam, the organic farm that will host Ecologise Camp 5

Announcing Ecologise Camp 5 at Dharwad, Karnataka

20th May 2017

This is a weekend Orientation Camp organised by the Ecologise Network. It is a part of a programme through which those living in cities can explore living in an ecologically more sensitive and sustainable manner. The camp also aims to expose participants to the current world crisis of global warming, resource depletion and growing inequality….

Earthbag Diaries 2: Planning, material and equipment

14th May 2017

Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The second installment in a series of four….

Ecologise book: You and Your Cycle: A Guide to Maintenance

12th May 2017

To mark the bicentenary year of the bicycle, and to promote cycling among children, Ecologise Hyderabad and Ride A Cycle, Bangalore has published book on bicycle maintenance entitled ‘You and Your Cycle: A Guide to Maintenance’. The fully illustrated 40-page book is authored by Lavanya K and Shamala Kittane and is priced at Rs. 50/….

From Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert's 'Ashes and Snow' series

Exclusive essay: Towards an Ethics of Permanence

10th May 2017

On the occasion of Buddha Poornima, Ecologise presents an exclusive essay co-authored by Nyla Coelho & M.G. Jackson, calling for a fundamental transformation of our perceptions of reality, and a befitting code of conduct to govern our relations with one another and with every other entity on earth; a planetary imperative in need of assertion….

Project Drawdown: Mapping the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming

Amy Brady writes: Project Drawdown is a coalition of more than two hundred experts who have gathered 100 of the most viable ways to “draw down” carbon from the atmosphere. The result of their research is an immensely readable volume of solutions to climate change written for laypeople but informed by the world’s top experts….

Avijit Pathak: I’m not a Marxist, but I’m grateful for Marx

9th May 2017

Karl Marx was possibly the founder of the most appealing secular religion in modern times. On his birth anniversary I hear a call from within; I feel like paying homage to the prophet of modern times. Though I’m not a Marxist, the oceanic currents in his thinking continue to fascinate students and wanderers like me….

Venetia Kotamraju

Earthbag Diaries 1: Stomping mud in Sakleshpur

6th May 2017

Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The first installment in a series of four….

Barkat Soomro

This 9-year-old is suing the Indian govt for not acting on climate change

5th May 2017

Ridhima Pandey, a 9-year-old from Uttarakhand, has filed a lawsuit against the Centre for failing to take action on climate change. Don’t be surprised, after all it’s her generation that’s going to inherit the earth with all the environmental problems left by ours, writes Meera Gopal, who is representing Ridhima before the National Green Tribunal….

Charles Eisenstein: A New Story of the People

4th May 2017

From TEDxWhitechapel: “Our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible; but our minds do not know how it’s possible”. In this intelligent and inspiring talk, writer and visionary Charles Eisenstein explores how we can make the transition from the old story of separation, competition and self-interest to a new Story of the People….

Brayan Caicedo

Sunita Narain: The future is in our hands

3rd May 2017

We must rethink the question of states, market and society. We have dismembered the state; grown the market and believed that we’ve empowered society. Slowly, the circle closed— state, market and aspiring, consuming society merged. They became one. Anyone outside this circle stopped getting counted. This cannot work. This is our future’s most important agenda….

How to form a global counter-economy

25th April 2017

From Open Democracy: Open cooperativism is an effort to infuse cooperatives with the basic principles of commons based peer production. Here are six interrelated strategies for post-corporate entrepreneurial coalitions. The aim is to go beyond the classical corporate paradigm, and its extractive profit-maximizing practices, toward the establishment of open cooperatives that cultivate a commons-oriented economy….

www.degrowth.de

Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries

21st April 2017

Jason Hickel writes: Growth isn’t an option any more–we’ve already grown too much. Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck speed. The hard truth is that this global crisis is due almost entirely to overconsumption in rich countries. Rich countries must “catch down” to more appropriate levels of development….

Kalpataru, the divine tree of life, depicted at the 8th century Pawon temple, Java

Indiafacts.info

What modern ecology can learn from ancient Hinduism

19th April 2017

Viva Kermani writes: Hinduism is the world’s largest nature based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources….

Seeing Wetiko: On capitalism, mind viruses, and antidotes for a world in transition

15th April 2017

From Kosmos Journal: What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating?…

Goenchi Mati: A call for environmental custodianship and inter-generational equity in mining

9th April 2017

Rahul Basu writes: Goa Foundation, one of the country’s best-known environmental groups, has proposed a whole new approach to mining that’s designed to tackle the colossal damage caused by rampant corruption and human greed. It can be applied globally to natural resources and commons generally, but starting with minerals as their economic values are clearer….