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Conserve/Resist

Adivasi groups protested against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's film, ‘MSG-2 the Messenger’

Botswana prez is ‘Racist of the Year’; Indian godman among nominees

3rd October 2016

Survival International has given its “Racist of the Year” award for 2016 to President Ian Khama of Botswana. The award is given annually to the person displaying the greatest prejudice against tribal peoples. Nominees in 2016 included Australian cartoonist Bill Leak and Indian godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, whose film MSG-2 depicts tribal people as “evil”….

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Bookshelf: The Burning Forest: India’s War in Bastar

28th September 2016

From Juggernaut publishing: There’s a hidden war going on in central India away from the headlines — and Bastar is at the centre of it. Sociologist Nandini Sundar, who has written about Bastar and its people for nearly three decades, has now authored a gripping account of the war between the Maoists and the State….

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In Gadchiroli, the mining of another adivasi god

19th September 2016

Javed Iqbal reports: Months have passed quietly with allegations of day-to-day violence and repression. Throughout the summer, say locals, many adivasis were caught and humiliated by the C60 – Maharashtra’s special anti-naxal force. In interviews, they detailed how they were deliberately humiliated by being beaten on the soles of their feet and on their buttocks….

Archival photo of a boat rally in protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam

Flashback: Arundhati Roy’s classic essay on the Narmada resistance

25th August 2016

The Narmada Bachao Andolan began 31 years ago as a protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river, and went on to raise questions about the very development model India has embraced. Today, with the NBA reviving their landmark struggle for justice, we are re-publishing author Arundhati Roy’s landmark 1999 essay on the topic….

CAMPA: The return of British Raj to the forests

20th August 2016

Gladson Dungdung writes: With the CAMPA bill being passed, the forest department has regained its lost hegemonic power over Adivasis. Many past and present instances suggest that the CAMPA amounts to the return of a British Raj-like regime to the forest, aggravating resource based conflict and the enmity between the State and forest dwelling communities….

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Warning from 40 top scientists: Tigers, elephants may go extinct by 2100

16th August 2016

40 scientists from across the world have recently announced that megafauna – large animals like elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, rhinoceroses – will not survive much longer if we don’t act fast. Examining population trends, the scientists said that human activities like deforestation and hunting can wipe out their populations by the end of this century….

Dongria Kondh boy Kalia stands in front of the Niyamgiri hill range

Lewis Davids/Survival

Spotlight: India’s adivasis and the web of indifference

15th August 2016

India is home to about 700 tribal groups with a population of 104 million, as per 2011 census, constituting the second largest tribal population in the world after Africa. Down to Earth magazine examines the many grave threats they face from government, corporations and phenomena like climate change, and our continuing indifference to their plight….

A black day for the rights of millions – Rajya Sabha passes Afforestation Bill

29th July 2016

Campaign for Survival and Dignity release: The Rajya Sabha has passed the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill, 2016. This Bill essentially gives carte blanche to forest officials to spend gigantic amounts of money (over Rs. 40,000 crores) without any accountability to the people whose forests, lands and lives will be damaged or destroyed by their activities….

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The Chizami model of development

24th July 2016

Ananda Banerjee reports: Chizami village, located in Phek district of eastern Nagaland, has 600 households with a population of 3,000. Chizami is considered a model village for the quiet revolution it has led in the past decade in terms of socioeconomic reforms and environment protection. The village council imposes strict fines on those violating norms….

Anupam Nath/Associated Press

Adivasi boy shot at by guards of ‘shoot-first’ Kaziranga national park

22nd July 2016

The Ecologist magazine reports: A 7-year old boy has been injured after getting shot by park guards in Assam’s Kaziranga national park, which operates a strict ‘shoot first’ policy. In the last nine years, an estimated 62 people have been shot dead by Kaziranga guards, four of whom were ironically arrested for alleged rhino poaching recently….

Vanishing act: Why insects are declining and why it matters

21st July 2016

Christian Schwägerl writes: According to data for 452 species, there has been a 45 percent decline in invertebrate populations over the past 40 years. So far, only the decline of honeybee populations has received attention, mostly because of their vital role in pollinating food crops. The rest of the insect world has been widely ignored….

The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below ‘safe’ levels

15th July 2016

Chris Mooney reports: In an ambitious study representing the latest merger between big data approaches and the quest to conserve the planet, scientists have found that across a majority of the Earth’s land surface, the abundance or overall number of animals and plants of different species has fallen below a “safe” level identified by biologists….

Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka

Nishanth Srinivasaiah

The culling of wild animals herald future water wars in India

10th July 2016

Peter Smetacek writes: Culling wild animals that have come to depend on agriculture for sustenance is only a short-term measure. This was portrayed as a man-animal conflict rather than what it actually is: the conversion of our forests from rich storehouses of bio-diversity to green deserts by a combination of mismanagement, political expediency and ignorance….

What incentivises local forest conservation efforts?

4th July 2016

This paper by multiple authors – published in the International Journal of the Commons – won the journal’s Ostrom Memorial Award for Most Innovative Paper of the Year. The authors use a unique longitudinal dataset of forest policy in 100 municipalities in Bolivia to examine the relationships between citizen pressures and economic incentives on forest policy….

No thanks to the govt, but coal may be on its way out in India anyway

30th June 2016

The Centre’s recent directive to state-owned power generation firms to stop coal imports and instead buy domestic coal, saw skeptical voices warning against seeing it as a sign of new commitment to reduce coal consumption. However, there’s good reason to the hope that India may be moving away from coal, irrespective of the government’s intent….

Report: More earth defenders were killed last year than ever before

23rd June 2016

The non-profit Global Witness has documented 185 killings across 16 countries of people defending their land, forests and rivers against destructive industries in 2015. It’s by far the highest annual death toll on record. Communities that take a stand are finding themselves in the firing line of companies’ private security, state forces and contract killers….

Draft National Forest Policy sets up another battle over Forest Rights Act

22nd June 2016

Nitin Sethi reports: The government has made public its draft National Forest Policy, to replace the existing one crafted in 1988. Incorporating consequences of climate change but entirely ignoring one of the three forest related laws, the Forest Rights Act, the policy brings new focus to plantations, growing trees outside forest lands and wood industry….

Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka

Nishanth Srinivasaiah

Debate: Is the ongoing culling of wild animals necessary?

17th June 2016

The Centre has endorsed various states’ move to list wild animals – elephants in Bengal, monkeys in Uttarakhand, peacocks in Goa and nilgai in Bihar – as ‘vermin’, allowing them to be culled. With human-animal conflict once again in under the lens, we present a selection of articles that examine both sides of the story….

The endangered white rhinoceros

The illegal wildlife trade and the business of ecocide

16th June 2016

Colin Todhunter writes: Without addressing the impacts and nature of corporate greed and a wholly corrupt neoliberal capitalism that privileges corporations and profit ahead of people and conservation, regardless of any success in the area of the trafficking of wild animals or plants, much of the world’s wildlife and biodiversity will remain under serious threat….

Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change

15th June 2016

The Guardian reports: Human-caused climate change appears to have wiped-out the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species, the small rodent Bramble Cay melomys, into the history books, from its only known location. It’s also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change….