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Conserve/Resist

If Gramdan is implemented, our land will be protected from any old or new land acquisition laws, says Devaji Tofa. Photo: Vikas Choudhary / CSE

Why this Maharashtra village is fighting for the long forgotten Gramdan Act?

2nd June 2023

Why does Mendha (Lekha) want to implement an age-old act that gives privately owned land in the collective legal ownership of the village at a time when the significance of individual property ownership has been rising? In a society that is moving towards hyper-individualism, the community in Mendha is taking a collective approach.

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.

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?

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.

How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart

4th May 2023

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The conservation industry’s ‘New Deal for Nature’ is a disaster for people and planet

2nd March 2020

Stephen Corry writes: The latest idea to be heavily promoted by big conservation NGOs is doubling the world’s “Protected-Areas” so that they cover 30% of the globe’s lands and oceans. What better answer to climate change and biodiversity loss? But it’s actually dangerous nonsense which would have exactly the reverse effect to what we’re told….

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….

Representative pic

Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism

30th November 2019

Massive protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe—and that’s only since September. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking scores of countries all share a common theme, argues Ben Ehrenreich….

55 ways to ‘starve the beast’

26th November 2019

Big Agri, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Food, Big Banking, Big Oil and Big Government aren’t there to make our lives better. They’re there to control us and make as much money as possible; and they’ll run you over if you’re in their way. Daisy Luther on how to fight back and starve the Beast….

The Great Water Grab: Wall Street is buying up the world’s water

17th November 2019

Jo-Shing Yang reports on how Wall Street banks like Citigroup and multibillionaires are buying up water sources all over the world at unprecedented pace. Simultaneously, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient. Also read an investigative report from The Guardian: Liquid assets: how the business of bottled water went mad…

Climate justice is injustice, if partial

18th October 2019

Ratheesh Pisharody writes: While we pretend to have weaved in a “justice angle” into the climate emergency narrative, we conveniently veto-ed ourselves back in. Thus we ensure we represent the perpetrators and also the victims. By taking away a large part of that victim-hood-bank we seem to want an unfair share of “climate justice” too….

This is not the Sixth Extinction. It’s the first Mass Extermination Event.

12th October 2019

Justin McBrien writes: The planetary atrocity of ecocide has no geological analogue. To call it the “sixth extinction event” is to make an active, organized eradication sound like some kind of passive accident. We’re in the midst of the First Extermination Event, wherein capital has pushed all life on Earth to the brink of extinction — extermination by capitalism….