Here are the key findings from Centre for Science and Environment’s study of how India has warmed over the years, also plotted in animation. The analysis looks at temperature trends in the country –both annual and seasonal– from 1901 till recent years. It finds that the country has been getting warmer continuously, consistently and rapidly….
Read More about Spotlight: Here’s how India has warmed from 1901 till 2017
James Fryer/ Gear Patrol
Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….
Read More about World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity
Vehicles set on fire by agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh on June 7, 2017.
IndiaSpend reports: A plentiful harvest in 2016 and imports drive some prices down 63%. A shortage of cash because of demonetisation. Despite Rs 3.5 lakh crore– invested over six decades to 2011, more than half of all farms depend on rains. These are the three factors agitating India’s 90 million families who depend on farming….
Read More about Why a bountiful harvest drove farmers to despair and anger
Larry C Price/The Guardian
From The Guardian: Zambia’s Kabwe is the world’s most toxic town, according to pollution experts, where mass lead poisoning has almost certainly damaged the brains and other organs of generations of children –who continue to be poisoned every day. The lead levels in Kabwe are as much as 100 times that of recommended safety levels….
Read More about The world’s most toxic town: the terrible legacy of Zambia’s lead mines
Enough! Farmers have been at the receiving end for far too long.
The Tribune
From The Tribune: Two developments seemed to have triggered the current protest. On the one hand, bumper crops have led to crashing down of crop prices for the farmer. On the other hand, the crop loan waiver announced by the newly elected BJP government in UP has reminded the famers of their long unfulfilled demand….
Read More about It’s a farmers’ movement in Maharashtra, not a strike
(From left) Johnson Jament, Lisba Yesudas and Robert Panipilla
Friends of Marine Life (FML), is a Kerala-based organisation that specialises in seabed ecosystem studies and also helps promote sustainable fishing. Three of it’s members, who hail from the state’s indigenous fishing community, the Mukkuva, were recently invited the first UN conference on the world’s oceans. The text of speeches they delivered at the conference….
Read More about Speech by representatives of indigenous fisher folk at the first UN conference on oceans
Fish are the last wild food, but our oceans are being picked clean, giving marine wildlife little chance to regenerate. Amrita Gupta speaks to the team behind a new seafood calendar. Until now, there was no such resource for fish eaters, yet the need for awareness about the seafood we consume has never been greater….
Read More about Do you really know your fish? Presenting the Fish Calendar
Former Union Cabinet-Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian writes: The promises of higher yield and lower pesticide usage which induced many, including myself as the then Textile Secretary, to welcome Bt cotton have now been belied… The main advantage now trotted out in favour of GM mustard is increased yield—there’s sufficient evidence that this claim is a myth….
Read More about T.S.R. Subramanian: Say no to GM mustardKen-Betwa river-linking project, if realised, will destroy livelihoods and ecology, including a portion of the Panna Tiger Reserve. Curiously enough, ground reports show that farmers in the project area are themselves not keen on it. Also included is a documentary, ‘Links of a Broken Chain’, as well as a detailed technical analysis of the project….
Read More about How the disastrous Ken-Betwa link project endangers India’s tigers, rivers and mountains
Jonathan Rutherford writes: Reducing societal consumption –degrowing the economy– need not necessarily result in chaotic economic breakdown. This is indeed an inevitable outcome within our present economic system, but possibly not others. What then would be required to contract the economy, in an orderly and fair way? A possible answer, from the ‘Simpler Way’ perspective….
Read More about How do you ‘degrow’ an economy, without causing chaos?
A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers
Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson
Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….
Read More about Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coal
V. Govindankutty at the Naubad karez, an ancient engineering marve
K.V.S.Giri
From The Hindu: Bidar’s Naubad karez, or tunnel wells, are an ancient engineering marvel. It’s a complex system, which works inversely underground to leverage gravity — that is, the plateau’s natural gradient ascends from the mouth to the mother well but the tunnel underneath has been cut to descend from the mother well to the mouth….
Read More about How Bidar beat back the drought
Breakwater being constructed for Adani's Vizhinjam port
Dredgingtoday.com
From DNA: Sagarmala is the Indian Government’s Rs 10 lakh crore programme to build Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) and industrial clusters around 14 key ports. But, the Sagarmala plan document lays out its goals as if the coast has been an empty or unproductive space, and is now poised to be a “gateway” to growth….
Read More about Sagarmala: The Rs 10 trillion project that is wrecking India’s coast
William Mitchelle/Meme Super
From The Wire: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is currently assessing the likely adverse effects on competition of the proposed merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont. If it goes through, the merger will create the world’s biggest chemical and materials company. But there are a dozen reasons and more why it must be stopped….
Read More about Why India’s Competition Commission must stop the Dow and DuPont merger
From TheWire: Public memory in India is amnesiac. Still, it is difficult to forget that Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 on the plank of promoting development, aptly captured by ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’. Three years down the line, it’s time to take stock. These findings seriously question the Modi government’s record so far….
Read More about What the data tells us about ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’
Danomyte/Shutterstock
From Quartz.com: The Luddites were the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton mills, which they believed was threatening their jobs. As machine learning and robotics consume manufacturing and white-collar jobs alike, New York Times journalist Clive Thompson revisits the Luddite’s history to see what the 200-year-old workers’ rebellion can teach us….
Read More about Luddites have been getting a bad rap for 200 years. Turns out, they were right
When I wrote about vegetarianism, or more precisely, why I as an Indian environmentalist would not advocate it, I had expected an emotional response. My article was meant to provoke a discussion. Here’s what I learnt from the responses; let’s see if we can find a middle way—not to agree, but to debate and dissent….
Read More about Sunita Narain responds to comments on “Why I would not advocate vegetarianism”From Journeyman Pictures: The financial storm of 2008 began brewing in when the US congress pushed the idea of home ownership for all. When it all went wrong, they opted for gargantuan bailouts for the big banks. This documentary offers fresh insight into the greatest economic crisis of our age: the one still awaiting us….
Read More about Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis
Representative image
Devinder Sharma writes: The development process is so designed that cities have been made drought proof over the years… Life in the mega city does not even provide an inkling of a severe drought prevailing everywhere in the state, where as many as 139 of the 176 taluks have been declared drought hit this year….
Read More about How come Bangalore doesn’t give an inkling of the severe drought in its backyard?
From The Indian Express: Each time with the GM debate, agro-business and biotech industry puts huge pressure on the Indian government to destroy food culture and replace many old nutritious-rich foods with by patented toxic monocultures. By threatening India with the GM Mustard, corporations are destroying the centre of diversity of mustard for the world….
Read More about GM Mustard in India: Five unanswered questions
