Developed by Dr. Ashok Kundapur, this project seeks to harness energy from the ocean to generate clean electric power all round the year at over 80% of installed capacity, way better than any conventional power plant burning coal or Uranium. He is seeking funds to develop a fully functional prototype, through the Milaap crowdfunding platform….
Read More about Call for donors: Clean ocean energy project in Udupi, IndiaAcclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh‘s non-fiction take on climate change and our collective inability to acknowledge its danger – titled The Great Derangement – has been hailed as a landmark, which promises to change the conversation around this crucial issue. In this series, we re-publish interviews which feature the writer at his forceful and articulate best….
Read More about The Great Derangement: Conversations with Amitav Ghosh – 3“A forest is much more than what you see,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery—trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes….
Read More about Video: How trees talk to each otherCrystal Stevens writes: Joseph Simcox is an ethnobotanist who has an intrinsic fascination with nature’s wonders. This ‘botanical explorer’, travels the world finding rare and even new plants. He believes that plants are our future, and passionately teaches the importance of symbiotic relationships between us and plants for us to live well on this planet….
Read More about Video: This ‘botanical explorer’ believes that plants are our futureChris Mooney reports: A recent report showed Greenland lost 1 trillion tons of ice mass between 2011 and 2014. A new NASA study shows that key areas where glaciers have been melting have actually experienced a reduction in gravitational pull, which has in turn reduced sea levels, confirming an age old prediction of climate science….
Read More about Video: A stunning prediction of climate science may now be coming trueAt the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1868), Japan faced ecological collapse from deforestation, erosion and watershed damage. New conservation practices were introduced in response to this crisis which brought about a sustainable interaction between nature and humans. Current anxieties about the state of the world are today driving renewed interest in the Edo experience….
Read More about In the world’s biggest city, the past offers lessons for surviving the futureIn this video, which has since gone viral, Binay Kumar, a corporate employee turned farmer addresses an audience in Bangalore, offering a sharp take on India’s rampant urbanization, catastrophic development model, the ongoing agrarian crisis and the rural-urban divide that feeds it. He states the obvious, but bitter truth: “Everybody wants to eat, but nobody wants to grow.”…
Read More about Watch: A blistering critique of India’s “destructive development”Marcin Jakubowski is one of those crazy people who has been trying to open source a civilization starter kit from the ground up. Here he talks of why he considers himself farmer-scientist and open source ecologist; scarcity; distribution and post-scarcity; the definition, goals of open source ecology; the civilization starter kit of 50 irreplaceable machines….
Read More about Video: Interview with Open Source Ecology pioneer Marcin JakubowskiAvant Garde Innovations, founded by siblings Arun and Anoop George from Kerala, has come up with a low-cost wind turbine that can generate enough electricity to power an entire house for a lifetime. The size of a ceiling fan, this wind turbine can generate 5 kWh/kW per day— with just a one-time cost of US$750….
Read More about Video: This wind turbine costs as much as an iPhone, powers an entire houseThe Indigenous Terra Madre festival 2015 at Shillong brought together indigenous peoples from around the world to share knowledge about food, nutrition and biocultural diversity. The Shillong Declaration, asserts that everyone has a right to good, clean and fair food and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage, tradition and culture that make this possible….
Read More about Indigenous Terra Madre festival – The Shillong DeclarationPhotographer Johnny Miller wanted to capture South Africa’s dramatic rich-poor divide from a new perspective, and decided to shoot many areas from several hundred feet in the air. The result, as seen in the series titled ‘Unequal Scenes’ , are startling. They also make us us wonder; what if Miller had attempted the same in today’s India?…
Read More about The stark divide between rich and poor, from aboveJohn Cook writes: An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about the threat of climate change, starring former US vice president Al Gore, was released ten years ago. It has undoubtedly made a mark, winning two Oscar awards, and the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Gore. But has the film achieved what it set out to do?…
Read More about Ten years on: how Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ made its markFloods are not a new thing in Bihar, a state in the lap of these flood plains. Around the time of India’s independence, the state started caging its rivers with embankments. In this video, Dinesh Mishra explains why Bihar is so vulnerable to flooding and more importantly, why embankments have caused more harm than good….
Read More about Video: Bihar’s great walls of destructionCatch News reports: In a new initiative by Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, proceedings for the day at the Delhi Assembly were kickstarted by a lecture series. The first lecture was delivered by veteran journalist P. Sainath, who spoke on ‘Water and Farm Crisis in India’, which he said were the defining crises of our times….
Read More about Video: P. Sainath at the Delhi assembly: Water and farm crisis are the defining problems of our time‘ From Uniformity to Diversity: A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems’, calls for breaking the chains that lock monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots to dominant farming systems in order to unleash truly sustainable approaches. In the accompanying video, Food MythBusters show why we really don’t need industrial agriculture to feed the world….
Read More about Video & report: Time to ditch industrial agriculture: here’s the evidenceScience Daily reports: Mental illnesses and mood disorders are common in cities, scientists found that this is partly due to the reduced access to nature. The authors of the study published in the journal Science said that the growing tensions from the necessary role of the urban cities have disconnected humans from the natural world….
Read More about Video & Report: Disconnect with nature driving mental illness in urban areasThe 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….
Read More about Report: More earth defenders were killed last year than ever beforeScroll.in reports: Sofia Ashraf, the artist behind the Kodaikanal Won’t video (bottom) in 2015 has a new video out. Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle describes the US Government’s complete blanking out of the Bhopal tragedy, when a poisonous gas leak from a Union Carbide plant led to the death of some 16,000 people….
Read More about Video: Rapper Sofia Ashraf takes down Dow Chemicals for the Bhopal tragedyForty-four years ago, representatives of 114 countries met in Stockholm. It was the first time the world had come together to think about climate change at the UN Conference on the Human Environment. At the conference, Indira Gandhi, the only head of state in attendance, gave a seminal speech on climate change and poverty alleviation….
Read More about Video: Scenes from the 1972 conference that led to World Environment DayIn Defence of Life follows the struggles and triumphs of four rural communities resisting large-scale mining projects in Colombia, Philippines, South Africa and Romania. Courageous environmental and human rights defenders from these communities describe how they have suffered and why they are standing firm to protect their families, land, water and life from destruction by mining….
Read More about Video: In Defence of Life: Stories of community resistance to mining
