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A view of the Athirapilly falls

Countercurrents.org

Athirappilly: Kerala’s destructive dam project that refuses to die

1st July 2016

Neha Miriam Kurian writes: The Left-Front government in Kerala is reviving the Athirappilly Hydro Electric Project against stiff resistance from local tribes and environmentalists. If implemented, it will displace the ancient hunter-gatherer Kadar tribe and submerge the only remaining low elevation riparian forests left in the Western Ghats, one of the world’s eight biodiversity ‘hotspots’….

Environment: It’s a question of survival now

28th June 2016

Bharat Dogra writes: The full dimensions of the environmental crisis in the 21st century need to be understood in wider terms of several critical parameters, together disrupting the life-creating conditions on earth to such an extent as to pose nothing less than a survival crisis for many forms of life and ultimately for human beings….

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….

Representational pic

NDA cleared more projects in wildlife habitats in 2 yrs than UPA did in 5 yrs

18th June 2016

Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava reports: The National Board of Wildlife, the highest advisory body to the government on wildlife issues, has cleared more industrial projects in and around wildlife habitats in past two years of NDA rule than what its predecessor UPA-II did in its entire tenure of five years, shows the data compiled by CSE….

Report card: Environmental governance under NDA government

17th June 2016

Two years of NDA government have meant a mixed bag for environmental governance in India, according to a performance review by the non-profit Centre for Science and Environment, While there was commendable progress on pollution control and waste management, forest governance took on a more industry-centric approach and the Paris Agreement was a missed opportunity….

Elephants raiding a banana plantation near Bannerghatta, Karnataka

Nishanth Srinivasaiah

Debate: Is the ongoing culling of wild animals necessary?

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….

Pandurang Hegde: Killing the environment on the altar of greed

13th June 2016

In his recent monthly address on radio, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “there’s close linkage between drought and environmental degradation and there’s a need for a mass movement to save forests and to conserve every drop of water.” The statement does recognise the problem but do the government’s policies and its implementation reflect these concerns?…

Representative pic

Norway becomes world’s first country to ban deforestation

9th June 2016

EcoWatch reports: Norway has become the first country to ban deforestation. The Norwegian Parliament pledged May 26 that the government’s public procurement policy will be deforestation-free. Any product that contributes to deforestation won’t be used in the Scandinavian country. Norway’s action plan also includes a requires the government to exercise due care in biodiversity protection….

Who is the dumb primate, really?

8th June 2016

Aseem Shrivastava writes: A species that endangers other species endangers itself. This simple lesson in interdependence is the first principle of ecology, a commonsensical science of such far-reaching and enduring contemporary significance as to merit a compulsory education for all humans; for nothing is more perilous for human destiny today than ecological illiteracy and myopia….

Obituary: TN Godavarman: the man behind India’s biggest environment court case

7th June 2016

Nihar Gokhale writes: In environmental policy, there’s one Supreme Court case that beat all others: TN Godavarman Thirumalpad versus Union of India and others. Writ Petition (Civil) 202 of 1995. On 1 June, days before World Environment Day, the man who lent his name to the most iconic environment case in the country, passed away….

Spotlight: Prakash Javadekar@2 years of Modi Government

21st May 2016

India’s environment minister Prakash Javadekar has been constantly in news, and not always for the right reasons. Under fire for diluting environmental protection mechanisms, critics have in the past labelled him ‘minister for environmental clearances’ for favouring industry over the environment. As the Narendra Modi government completes two years, here’s a look at Javadekar’s chequered record….

How India’s forests have been lost in translation – in plantations

17th May 2016

Peter Smetacek writes: The question, naturally, is: What are we hoping to achieve by the process of planting forests? Because we don’t have a clear answer, it is no surprise that there is not a single success story in all the “watershed management” and “afforestation” drives that the public has paid for throughout the country….

Pakistan’s ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ takes hold

15th May 2016

Rina Saeed Khan reports: Under its “Green Growth Initiative”, the Imran Khan-led Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has begun a number of activities to reverse sixty years of deforestation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Along with a crackdown on the timber mafias, they have started a large scale afforestation project called “The Billion Tree Tsunami” to reverse this trend….

Study: Human activity puts one in five plant species at risk of extinction

The State of the World’s Plants report “provides, for the first time, a baseline assessment of our current knowledge on the diversity of plants on earth, the global threats these plants currently face, and the policies in place and their effectiveness in dealing with these threats,” according to scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens, London….

Modi government has launched a silent war on the environment

12th May 2016

Nayantara Narayanan reports: The UPA government left behind a legacy of weakened safeguards for India’s environment, forests and forest-dwelling people. The Narendra Modi government has lost no time in weakening them further. The process has been so accelerated that journalists have struggled to keep pace with them. Here is a look at seven reported changes….

Nuno Andre Ferreira

Digest: The manmade forest fires of the Himalayan foothills

4th May 2016

There are almost 400 fires in the Himalayan foothills currently, which have killed five people and finished off at least 19 square kilometres of forest. The timber mafia and ordinary folks are known to illegally set fire in the Himalayan foothills, to fell trees, but its uncontrollable nature this year also points to micro-climatic changes….

Jungle Book: Tribes threatened with eviction as Disney movie opens

10th April 2016

As the new Jungle Book movie is released, tribes across India are being illegally evicted from their lands because they’ve been turned into tiger reserves. One of these places is the iconic Kanha Tiger Reserve, the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s original novel, from where hundreds of Baiga and Gond tribespeople were illegally evicted in 2014….