Rohan Chakravarty
Rohan Chakravarty, creator of a popular comic column, writes: We know of Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson and Dian Fossey. But do you know about these heroes? This Women’s Day (8th March), Green Humour celebrates some ‘wild’ women of India- J.Vijaya, Prerna Bindra, Aparajita Datta, Divya Mudappa, Vidya Athreya, Kiran Pathija, Nandini Velho and Tiasa Adhya (click…
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A truck leaves an illegal sand mine by the Yamuna in Greater Noida
http://ismenvis.nic.in
The hundreds of millions of Indians migrating from villages to cities require up to a billion square yards of new real estate development annually. Current construction already draws more than 800 million tons of sand every year, mostly from India’s waterways. All the people I spoke to assumed that much of it is taken illegally….
Read More about How to steal a river: New York Times on India’s rampant sand miningNityanand Jayaraman writes: Coke and Pepsi are the best-known agents of commodification of water. It’s unethical and immoral for a resource that is so vital to life to be commodified. So, every nail in the coffins of companies involved in selling water –like Coke, Pepsi, Nestle, Tata and so on– is a nail well driven….
Read More about Why the Coke-Pepsi boycott in Tamil Nadu is a good thing
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Live Mint reports: Kerala is going through its worst drought in a century, damaging 30,353 hectares of agricultural land and resulting in a loss of Rs225 crore. Kerala revenue minister E. Chandrasekharan, during the budget session of the assembly on Wednesday, said only 44% of water remains in the state’s reservoirs as on 17 January….
Read More about ‘Wet’ Kerala reeling under worst drought in a centuryDeepa Bhasthi writes in The Guardian: The illegal dumping of waste mixed with mass untreated sewage in Bangalore is creating a water crisis which threatens residents’ health–and is causing the city’s famous lakes to catch fire. This is the new story of the city, which some scientists believe will be “unliveable” in a few years….
Read More about City of burning lakes: experts fear Bangalore will be uninhabitable by 2025
The team from Safe Harvest interacts with Farmers in Niwali (Sendhwa)
YourStory
Safe Harvest is a conglomeration of eight civil society organisations that have been working towards and promoting non-pesticide management (NPM) practices among some of India’s poorest and most disenfranchised communities. Today, they work with a farmer base of close to 50,000 across 11 states, many of whom have seen a 20% rise in their income….
Read More about This company is helping 50,000 farmers across 11 states grow and sell pesticide-free foodThis 27-year-old documentary filmmaker from Hyderabad has won 104 national and international awards. Anshul Sinha has spent more than a year now, studying and understanding the agrarian crisis that has affected the country. “The vision of the film is to save farmers in India,” says Anshul. Despite his credentials, Anshul’s new film has no takers….
Read More about A documentary on India’s agrarian crisis, by an award-winning young filmmaker
There were 1.1 million premature deaths in India due to long-term exposure to pollutants. While China registered slightly higher figures, it has now acted against this hazard—the situation in India, in contrast, is getting worse. The highest number of premature deaths globally due to ozone is also in India. Might all this qualify as genocide?…
Read More about Darryl D’Monte: Does India’s refusal to tackle air pollution amount to genocide?
The venue of the 2015 Art of Living event on the Yamuna floodplains
The Third Pole reports: Over 140 million people are eligible to vote as Uttar Pradesh —the land of the Ganga and the Yamuna— goes to polls. Everybody agrees that the poison affects drinking water and irrigation. Still, the apathy is mirrored in town after town in eastern UP. Candidates rarely address it in their campaigns….
Read More about ‘Ganga, Yamuna are drains, no party cares’Debutant director Aparnaa Singh’s Irada is said to have been inspired by real events –the pollution of groundwater by a chemical manufacturer with the blessings of a state’s ruling party. Set in Punjab, Irada advocates solutions that viewers will be hard-pressed to replicate, but its concerns are timely, character sketches memorable, and its empathy unmistakable….
Read More about Irada: a well-intended expose of pollution and graft from Bollywood
In Kaziranga national park, rangers shoot people to protect rhinos. The park features in a new BBC investigation, which highlights some of the conflicts that characterise contemporary conservation, as the need to protect endangered species comes into contact with the lives and rights of people who live in and around the increasingly threatened national parks….
Read More about Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos
Nikita Sattiraju writes: Farmer suicides in India have largely been attributed to debt, drought, crop failure or poor returns. However, farmers have been taking the drastic step regardless of a good rainfall year or bad, a good price year or a disappointing one. Why? Questions arise on the exact nature and reasons behind the deepening problem….
Read More about The terrible truth behind the wave of farmer suicides in IndiaIndia Water Portal reports: The year 2016 was an abysmal year in terms of environmental policy and conservation in India. There were also many initiatives worth talking about. Any initiative, however, is only as good as those managing it. Here we talk about four people in the country who made news for their water-related actions….
Read More about Environ-Mental? The bizarre ‘green’ ideas of our netas
Kirankumar Vissa writes; Everyone in the media has been talking about the slew of pro-farmer measures included in Budget 2017, how it is a Budget for the ‘have nots’ and one that will give a big fillip to agriculture. It is time to call this Budget what it is–a big prank on India’s farming community….
Read More about Why the 2017 Union Budget is deceptively ‘pro-farmer’
Every five years, the Central Electricity Authority prepares a National Electricity Plan. Last December, the CEA released draft of third NEP for 2017-2022 seeking comments from various stakeholders. Some of its conclusions, like ‘close to zero energy demand deficit’, may sound like music to power starved India but also raises serious questions about its authenticity….
Read More about The draft national electricity plan paints rosy picture of power scenarioRitwick Dutta, noted environment lawyer and founder of the highly accomplished Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), received the Bhagirath Prayas Samman, an award that recognises efforts towards protection and conservation of rivers. Manu Moudgil caught up with him on his journey so far and how we can further expand the constituency of environment….
Read More about Ritwick Dutta: ‘We need to have a selfish interest in environment’Daripalli Ramaiah, recently awarded the Padmashri, India’s third highest civilian honour, has dedicated his life to increasing the country’s green cover and in the process has been credited with planting one crore saplings. The fight of Ramaiah to plant trees was not alone, as his wife Janamma has also made significant contribution to tree planting….
Read More about Daripalli Ramaiah: The man who planted (ten million!) trees
Live Mint reports: Agriculture is likely to be the worst affected by the note ban, because 1) The policy coincided with harvest of kharif crops, and farmers are facing difficulty selling it. 2) Lack of cash must have posed difficulty in sowing of rabi crops. 3) Unlike other sectors, farm output is perishable in nature….
Read More about Demonetisation, farmer suicides, and the Union budget
G. Seetharaman reports: Activists say one of the biggest hurdles for FRA is that even states like Maharashtra, among the better performers, and Odisha are introducing policies which will help the forest department retain control of forest resources through joint forest management committees or similar bodies, which will dilute the powers of the gram sabha….
Read More about Why the Forest Rights Act is yet to achieve major milestones
Jemima Rohekar
Jemima Rohekar writes: So secluded is Silent Valley that there is no written record of any human habitation in its core area. It is also the site of the first and most bitterly fought ‘environment vs development’ debate in India. Silent Valley reinforces the fact that forests and their resident biodiversity are our greatest wealth….
Read More about Sounds of silence: a forest that survived ‘development’
