Home
Conflict/Dispossession

Conflict/Dispossession

Representational pic

How the Narendra Modi government is diluting green clearance norms

2nd May 2019

From Down to Earth: It looks like the environmental clearance process is becoming a formality. The quality of assessment, compliance of clearance conditions and the involvement of local community through public hearings are being further weakened. The purpose is to ease the process of obtaining clearances for mega projects like Bharatmala Pariyojana and Sagar Mala….

Obituary: Jay Hanson, early populariser of the converging crises

26th April 2019

Ron Patterson writes: Jay Hanson was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and Dieoff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. He was probably more responsible for starting the whole Peak Oil Awareness Movement than any other person….

Richard Greeman: France’s Yellow Vests struggle to reinvent democracy

17th April 2019

Many working-class Yellow Vests can’t help seeing environmentalists as bourgeois on bicycles wanting to be nice but unwilling to struggle directly against the establishment. So their call for unity is also, in part, a challenge to the environmental movement: “Join us in the struggle for social equality and be ready to fight the whole system.”…

Dhruv Rathee: Environment is the Modi government’s most under-reported disaster

14th April 2019

The UPA government didn’t have a stellar record on environment, but what has happened in past five years is unprecedented. The biggest statistical evidence for this lies in the Environmental Performance Index, where India was ranked the fourth-worst country (177) in the world out of 180 last year. Five years ago, India was ranked 155th….

Rahul Basu: What the National Mineral Policy 2019 does and doesn’t get right

2nd April 2019

The National Mineral Policy 2019 lays a foundation for the systematic implementation of intergenerational equity in India with reference to natural resources. However, the question is whether it will be implemented and implemented quickly. Will future generations see us as the generation that consumed the planet, or the generation that changed the course of history?…

Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans

Daesung Lee

Taking India’s climate migrants seriously

17th March 2019

Given the scale of the problem, India’s response to climate migration has been woefully inadequate. Administrative lethargy or the lack of foresight and planning will only exacerbate the suffering and plight of climate migrants. This is particularly unjust to them, as they are least responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, writes Nandan Sharalaya…

Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or succeeded, and the challenges ahead

24th February 2019

Many of these battles were fought not because people understood how these projects affected the environment but because they saw the loss of their land and livelihoods as the loss of security and dignity. As a woman adivasi farmer succinctly put it, “I wish to be a farmer, and not a housemaid in someone’s home.”…

Neoliberalism or death: The U.S.’ economic war against Venezuela

21st February 2019

Once the richest country in Latin America, today Venezuela lies in shambles, with food and medicine inaccessible to most, and sparking widespread protests and massive violence. In this interview, Venezeulan President Nicolás Maduro speaks on the politics behind the crisis, and specifically the role of the U.S. Also, an analysis by Marxist scholar Vijay Prashad….

Chris Martenson: Collapse is already here

12th February 2019

From PeakProsperity.com: Many people are expecting some degree of approaching collapse — be it economic, environmental and/or societal — thinking that they’ll recognize the danger signs in time. As if it’ll be completely obvious, like a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s not how collapse works. Collapse is a process, not an event. And it’s already underway, all around us….

Ruchira Petkar/The Wire

Thousands in Maharashtra are opposing what could be ‘globe’s largest’ oil refinery

8th February 2019

From The Wire: The Rs 3 lakh crore oil refinery project, planned by oil majors over an expanse of over 15,000 acres of land in Maharashtra’s Konkan region, if it takes off, will inevitably displace farmers and fisherfolk from 17 villages – 15 villages in Ratnagiri and two in neighbouring Sindhudurg along the western coast….

Our new, happy life? The ideology of development, by Charles Eisenstein

5th February 2019

People in older cultures, connected to community and place, held close in a lineage of ancestors, woven into a web of personal and cultural stories, radiate a kind of solidity and presence that I rarely find in any modern person. Whatever the measurable gains of the Ascent of Humanity, we have lost something immeasurably precious….

Vizhinjam, Kerala, where the Adani Group is building a mega port

The coast is unclear: on the 2018 CRZ notification

2nd February 2019

From The Hindu:This government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target ecologically valuable areas and turn them into sites for industrial production, despite abundant evidence for such policies’ damaging effects. The latest instance of this is the 2018 CRZ notification, which, among other things, increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters….

How conservation became colonialism

30th January 2019

From Foreign Policy: Conservationism often conflicts with indigenous traditions of stewardship that have kept the rainforests in balance for thousands of years. The tension has its roots in the founding worldview of modern conservationism, which was conceived not during today’s battle to save the rainforests, but during the genocidal Indian wars in the American West….

Laboratory of Fascism : Capital, labour and environment in Modi’s Gujarat

24th January 2019

Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah write: We are caught in a false debate, where Narendra Modi, the perpetrator of 2002 carnage is counter-posed with Modi the “development leader”. We call it a false debate, since for us, who have lived and grown in Gujarat, the two aspects are actually the same – that of fascism….

The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change

21st January 2019

From The Guardian: Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty. But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change, even if migrants don’t often specifically mention “climate change” as a motivating factor….

How India’s economists have failed its farmers

15th January 2019

Devinder Sharma writes: If raising productivity is the major factor I see no reason why Punjab farmers should be committing suicide. But the fact that economists don’t want to acknowledge is that it is actually the low price that farmers being deliberately paid that is the primary reason for the terrible agrarian crisis that prevails….

The Yellow Vests: Is Europe seeing the world’s first climate riot?

17th December 2018

What started as an online protest movement against the hike in fuel taxes, France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ movement has led to the worst riots witnessed by the country in half a century. With six dead, 12,000 arrested, and the unrest spreading to the rest of Europe, it may be the world’s first ‘climate riot’ of consequence….

What’s the truth behind the Botswana elephant deaths?

11th December 2018

The news is awash with reports of 87 elephants having been “killed by poachers” in Botswana, supposedly a result of wildlife guards no longer carrying firearms. The story originates with “Elephants Without Borders,” an NGO which is getting massive publicity, and presumably donations, as a result. Survival International’s Stephen Corry digs up the real story….

The great Indian irrigation deceit

29th November 2018

J. Harsha, Director, Central Water Commission, writes: India fails to deliver water in time, and in adequate quantities to small landholdings (< 1 hectare) belonging to marginal farmers (constituting 85 per cent of total farmers) cultivating in 43.64 million hectares of canal-irrigated areas. The impact of this great Indian irrigation deceit is enormous on agriculture…

Enough! Why 1,00,000 farmers are marching to Delhi on November 30

21st November 2018

From The Telegraph: India’s farmers are marching once again to demand that Parliament discuss the agrarian crisis. The underlying message is simple. If over 3,00,000 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the past 25 years, then the agrarian crisis is no longer an economic one. It’s a moral crisis. It cannot be allowed to continue….