Prof. Meher Engineer, physicist and formerly Acting Director, J. C. Bose Institute, Kolkata and former Chairperson, Indian Academy of Social Sciences, passed away on April 24, 2019. Involved in many people’s movements working on human rights, livelihood and environmental issues, he was also an authority in climate science and active in the climate justice movement….
Read More about Aseem Shrivastava: Meher Engineer RIP… “Ami ki korbo?”
“And now, irony of ironies, a consensus is building that climate change is the world’s single largest security challenge. Increasingly the vocabulary around it is being militarized. And no doubt very soon its victims will become the ‘enemies’ in the new war without end.” (From Arundhati Roy’s Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture for PEN-America)…
Read More about Arundhati Roy: ‘We’re lurching into an unknown future, in a blitzkrieg of idiocy’
Chirag Dhara writes: There is no disputing how urgently India – and the rest of the world – need to clean up its air. Unfortunately, therein lies a cruel twist. A rapid decontaminating of the air of aerosol pollution –assuming it was possible– itself raises the prospect of serious health consequences. The reason: how aerosols interact with climate….
Read More about Cleaning up India’s air pollution — damned if we do, damned if we don’t?
Representational pic
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….
Read More about How the Narendra Modi government is diluting green clearance norms
Rahul Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress, along with Jairam Ramesh
“Carbon tax” is a tax on fossil fuels to reduce their consumption. A revenue neutral carbon tax is “the fairest, most effective, most efficient single policy tool in the fight for a habitable climate,” says Charles Komanoff. The term “revenue neutral” simply means the tax revenue is returned back to the public in some form….
Read More about Rahul Gandhi’s cash transfer scheme could be a revenue neutral Carbon Tax
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….
Read More about Dhruv Rathee: Environment is the Modi government’s most under-reported disaster
We commit, and ask all political parties, people’s movements, civil society organisations, and other relevant groups to commit to an India that is just, equitable, and sustainable for today’s and coming generations. The above commitment (and related steps) is urgently required in the context of the multiple crises we are facing today. (Courtesy Vikalp Sangam)…
Read More about Elections 2019: People’s Manifesto for a Just, Equitable, and Sustainable India
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?…
Read More about Rahul Basu: What the National Mineral Policy 2019 does and doesn’t get right
Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans
Daesung Lee
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…
Read More about Taking India’s climate migrants seriously
From IndiaSpend.com: Fifteen of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world are located in India, according to an analysis of air quality in several cities around the world by IQAir Group. Gurugram, in Haryana, topped the list with an average annual particulate matter (PM 2.5) quality of 135 g/m3 (micrograms/cubic metre), in 2018….
Read More about Fifteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India: New report
From Down to Earth: The biodiversity of the Western Ghats, already under a lot of anthropogenic pressure, will suffer even more if the expansion of the Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant, goes ahead. That this will be done for generating power through a technology that has several alternative and much benign options is even more ironical….
Read More about Kaiga nuclear plant expansion: Expect body blow for Western Ghats biodiversity
There has always been an unmistakable umbilical link between the dance form of Kerala called Theyyam and nature. The unique pantheistic art form of the Theyyam now faces increasing threats of gentrification and Brahminisation, thus paving the way for the destruction of the sacred groves where it was born. Text and photographs by Thulasi Kakkat….
Read More about As Kerala’s sacred groves disappear, the Theyyam art form loses a vital link
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.”…
Read More about Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or succeeded, and the challenges ahead
Ruchira Petkar/The Wire
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….
Read More about Thousands in Maharashtra are opposing what could be ‘globe’s largest’ oil refinery
Vizhinjam, Kerala, where the Adani Group is building a mega port
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….
Read More about The coast is unclear: on the 2018 CRZ notification
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….
Read More about Laboratory of Fascism : Capital, labour and environment in Modi’s Gujarat
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….
Read More about How India’s economists have failed its farmers
This manifesto was adopted by an assembly representing the farmers of India on the occasion of the historic Kisan Mukti March organised by AIKS at Delhi, on 30 November 2018. Over the past 25 years, more than 3,00,000 of India’s debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide, a crisis which successive governments have done little to address….
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The full text of a Public Interest Litigation initiated before the Supreme Court of India, by Akhilesh Chipli and Shankar Sharma, requesting the court to draw firm legal limits on India’s suicidally destructive economic growth during the last three decades, which has led to rapidly deteriorating ecological conditions (air, water, soil, climate) in the country….
Read More about Read: A PIL to protect India’s vital, life-supporting natural resources
Mumbai has four rivers: Mithi, Oshiwara, Poisar and Dahisar, which are (together) 40.7km long. And yet, for most part, they remain invisible to the city’s population. Today, haphazard development policies along with encroachments, have led to the rapid deterioration of these rivers, which have been practically reduced to drains. A photo essay by Pooja Jain….
Read More about Photo essay: Rivers of the Island City
