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Conflict/Dispossession

Conflict/Dispossession

Locals protest at Barsu Solgaon of the Rajapur block in Ratnagiri. Photo: Twitter@aviuv

Protests against Ratnagiri Refinery: Skeletons in the Development Closet

19th May 2023

Protests are raging in the Konkan region of Maharashtra against the government’s proposed refinery project in Ratnagiri. Hundreds have been arrested so far. Protesting locals have alleged unprecedented police action. While not being reported much in the mainstream media, locals continue to build their resistance with greater strength. Read more to find out why this is happening?

Partially burned and standing trees called snags loom over a site where researchers from the John T Harrington Forestry Research Center are conducting reforestation experiments at Deer Lake Mesa in Cimarron, New Mexico on August 17, 2021.

[File: Reuters/Adria Malcolm]

We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

11th May 2023

Apocalypse investors are pushing fake climate solutions on us that are making climate change worse.

A pastoralist looks at Hasdeo’s Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB) mine that has lead to severe environmental and social issues. Residents of Hasdeo region fear their land meeting the same fate as its adjacent Korba, a critically polluted area.

Photo by Vaishnavi Suresh/PEP Collective

On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India

24th March 2023

21st March is marked as International Forests Day: A brief look at the state of Forests and Forest Rights in India today.

Author (with spectacles) at Narmada Sangharsh Yatra (Struggle Journey), 1990

Photo by Shailendra Yashwant

It did not stop the dam, but is it a failure?

23rd February 2023

The many faces of India’s Narmada movement: Since the mid-1980s, the Narmada valley has also been the site of one of Independent India’s most iconic and globally well-known people’s movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement). For the last nearly 40 years, this movement has raised questions about and tried to stop, a series of mega-dams along the river and its tributaries.

How Nepal Regenerated its Forests: Communities know their Forests Best

21st February 2023

After relinquishing control of forests to the villages that depend on them, forest cover in Nepal nearly doubled.

Joshimath Crisis is a Warning from the Himalayas

6th February 2023

A development model based on local conditions and aspirations is necessary. The current crisis in Joshimath is the consequence of choosing economics over ecology or the ecosystem. It was scripted from the time we opted for a development model that instigated the open plunder of natural resources.

Paul Kingsnorth: The Great Unsettling

3rd February 2023

There is no such thing as a perfect society, and anyone who tries to build one will either go mad or become a tyrant. Humans are fallen, or just natural, and both of those words are synonyms for ‘imperfect’. What is ‘perfection’ anyway? It is a concept designed by a part of the modern human mind – the part that likes clean lines, easy answers, plots that end by neatly tying up all the threads. The quest for perfection is a quest for homogeneity and control, and it leads to the gulag and the guillotine, the death camp and the holy war. Even if we could agree on what perfection amounted to, we would none of us be equipped to build it.

Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation

16th May 2020

For years, normality has been stretched nearly to breaking-point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that it’s snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids, to see what we might weave from them?…

War, mismanagement and climate change: Iraq’s environment on the brink

20th March 2020

From Fanack.com: From Saddam Hussein’s destruction of the unique Southern marshlands to the burning of croplands in Iraq’s greenbelt in 2019, the country’s valuable natural and cultural resources are being degraded rapidly. At the same time, growing awareness of environmental issues has spurred the rise of groups that want to change the course of the country….

The conservation industry’s ‘New Deal for Nature’ is a disaster for people and planet

2nd March 2020

Stephen Corry writes: The latest idea to be heavily promoted by big conservation NGOs is doubling the world’s “Protected-Areas” so that they cover 30% of the globe’s lands and oceans. What better answer to climate change and biodiversity loss? But it’s actually dangerous nonsense which would have exactly the reverse effect to what we’re told….

Representative pic

The Hindu

Ahead of ‘Day Zero’, Delhi’s water crisis is about to turn into a water war

4th February 2020

From ABC News: Delhi is one of 21 Indian cities that could run out of groundwater, according to a 2018 government thinktank report. Disputes over water often lead to violence, especially in the city’s unauthorised settlements. The state government and the local “water mafia” are drilling bores, further depleting groundwater and exacerbating the larger problem….

Amitav Ghosh: What the West doesn’t get about the climate crisis

20th January 2020

The West has come to rely on “an expert discourse” from scientists. The result is that science is giving fearful westerners hope in a business-friendly “sustainable development,”, which they think will save the system before it collapses. The alternative, a massive scale economic adaptation to a new distribution of resources, is too scary to consider….

Nazmul Haque

The Galactic Gardeners’ Forum pings the people of Planet Earth in the New Year

17th January 2020

We come from a remote handful of living planets and moons scattered across this galaxy. We are a network of galactic gardeners who nurture life by sharing our stories, experiences, knowledge, and ideas. We’ve decided to contact you because we cherish life everywhere we find it — and life on your planet is in grave danger….

A $5 trillion economy for India: At what cost?

14th January 2020

PM Narendra Modi wants India to be a “$5 trillion economy” by 2024. The consequences of such high GDP growth –even setting aside questions regarding its distribution or true worth– will result in depriving the dispossessed sections of society of access even to natural resources, while driving fragile ecologies to a point of no return….

As animals and plants go extinct, languages die off too

11th January 2020

From Vice.com: Just like an animal species, our languages evolved in the context of the environments that surrounded them. When we change those environments, we threaten much more than just the physical living things that thrive there. In the parts of the world where biodiversity is most at risk, words and phrases also face extinction….

2020: The Incipient Bet

30th December 2019

From CounterPunch: He whipped out a check for a thousand dollars and said, “I bet you US$1000 that in the year 2020, we’re not even close to the kind of disaster you describe.” He had obviously planned to maneuver me into this kind of challenge. “We won’t even be close. I’ll bet on my optimism.”…

Representative pic

Beggars as choosers: Why India’s poor opt to beg

6th December 2019

Beggars are usually ignored on the streets and questions are asked about why they don’t work. But many have indeed worked as paid labour and have chosen begging as the primary activity, finds Sabina Yasmin Rahman. As India’s urban and rural poor reel from a state-made economic crisis, this revealing study takes on an urgent relevance….

Representative pic

Welcome to the global rebellion against neoliberalism

30th November 2019

Massive protests have been roiling through Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Sudan, the UK, and Zimbabwe—and that’s only since September. As distinct as the protests seem, the uprisings rocking scores of countries all share a common theme, argues Ben Ehrenreich….

The Hindu

How caste shapes water conflicts in drought-ridden Maharashtra

27th November 2019

Anuj Ghanekar writes: Drought affects everyone, but the Dalits are the worst affected. They often become targets of threats and violence in different ways if they try to access water or demand rights for water, with several atrocities on record. One study noted several instances where water sources used by Dalits were deliberately contaminated with human excreta….

The scientists who predicted Australia’s bushfire emergency decades ago

23rd November 2019

From The Guardian: Now, as more dangerous fire weather is forecast, they’re being asked: why did the science not lead to action? “I would blame most of that on the lobbying”,” says Pearman, now 78. “That lobbying has been extremely powerful in a country driven by the resource sector that includes uranium, coal and gas….