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
The Wire reports: If India builds all its proposed coal-based power plants, then it might not fulfill its promise made under the Paris climate agreement, says a new study conducted by CoalSwarm. The country is currently the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and its largely-coal-based energy sector contributes two-thirds of those emissions….
Read More about India’s outsized coal plans would wipe out Paris climate goals
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 mergerFrom Chinadialogue.net: China’s massive Asian infrastructure network of proposed new roads, railways, ports and airports, linking 65 countries to itself must grapple with the same problem as the ancient Silk Road it’s been named after. Sand. Deserts present as big a problem along the “Silk Road Economic Belt” as when camel caravans ambled across Central….
Read More about China’s ‘new Silk Road’ could expand Asia’s deserts
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
The Wire reports: Using satellite data of the last 14 years, researchers have shown that a thick blanket of toxic ammonia lies over the world’s major agricultural areas, with India being the worst affected. It’s emitted mainly by fertilisers as well as poorly managed animal waste. However, India has no policy to regulate ammonia emissions….
Read More about India has an ammonia problem but no policy to deal with it
From The Tribune: The drought has affected 21 of the 32 districts, including the ‘rice bowl’ area of the Cauvery delta, where we travelled. Farmers’ distress was visible everywhere. This is not just a natural disaster. Our travel made it clear that a good deal of farmers’ distress is due to man-made or policy-induced disaster….
Read More about Yogendra Yadav: Tamil Nadu’s drought is also a policy-induced disaster
Amy Brady writes: Project Drawdown is a coalition of more than two hundred experts who have gathered 100 of the most viable ways to “draw down” carbon from the atmosphere. The result of their research is an immensely readable volume of solutions to climate change written for laypeople but informed by the world’s top experts….
Read More about Project Drawdown: Mapping the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming
The Aghanashini river
Manjunath Bhat/Flickr, CC BY 2.0
TheWire.in reports: The Aghanashini is one of the last free flowing rivers in Karnataka: it has no major industrial establishments, dams or townships on its banks. It is in this rich and highly productive estuary that the state government plans to build a multi-purpose estuarine port, which’s now one last step away from final clearance….
Read More about A rare, pristine estuary comes under threat in Karnataka
This is the introductory article in Firstpost’s nine-part series of ground reports on the ongoing water crisis in south India. The series will cover various aspects of the near-calamitous situation in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, with the onset of blistering heat waves that are putting more pressure on existing water resources….
Read More about Drought in South India: A Firstpost special series
Barkat Soomro
Ridhima Pandey, a 9-year-old from Uttarakhand, has filed a lawsuit against the Centre for failing to take action on climate change. Don’t be surprised, after all it’s her generation that’s going to inherit the earth with all the environmental problems left by ours, writes Meera Gopal, who is representing Ridhima before the National Green Tribunal….
Read More about This 9-year-old is suing the Indian govt for not acting on climate change
A 100 actions of protest will be held across the country between May 1 – 7, 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the ADB, highlighting the gross human rights violations, loss of livelihood, and environmental destructions caused by the ‘development model’ being pushed by ADB and its ilk, using public money….
Read More about Why the Asian Development Bank is facing a hundred protests in India this month
A record number of guns and animal skins were seized during a recent raid at the Meerut house of a retired Colonel
The Times of India
A recent raid at the Meerut house of a retired Colonel and his national-level shooter son unearthed a shockingly large cache of animal skins, parts and meat, apart from over 100 illegally imported firearms. This feature by Down to Earth analyses the magnitude and international nature of the flourishing illegal trade of Indian wildlife species….
Read More about The illegal and ignominious world of wildlife trafficking
Brayan Caicedo
We must rethink the question of states, market and society. We have dismembered the state; grown the market and believed that we’ve empowered society. Slowly, the circle closed— state, market and aspiring, consuming society merged. They became one. Anyone outside this circle stopped getting counted. This cannot work. This is our future’s most important agenda….
Read More about Sunita Narain: The future is in our hands
