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Representative pic

Conserve/Resist

A first: Indian court declares Ganga, Yamuna as living legal entities

22nd March 2017

Live Mint reports: The Uttarakhand high court has recognized the Ganga and the Yamuna as so-called living entities, giving the rivers that have seen years of damage, a legal voice. Animals, for instance, aren’t considered living entities by law. It’s the first time a court has recognized a non-human as a living entity in India….

Food/Farming

Soil building, soil amendments and rain barrels: A primer

21st March 2017

From Robinson Love Plants: Regular soil building and correct use of soil amendments will give us nutrient rich soils which help vastly improve food security for future generations, while water wastage can be combated by installing an effective rain barrel system. These methods are time-consuming but relatively inexpensive, and yield many passive benefits over time….

Countercurrents.org

ALTERNATIVES

Information theory pioneer John Scales Avery on the planet’s converging crises

From Countercurrents.org: Human cultural evolution can be regarded as an enormous success in many respects. However, thoughtful observers agree that civilization is entering a period of crisis. As all curves move exponentially upward: population, production, consumption, etc, one can observe signs of increasing environmental stress, while the existence of nuclear weapons threaten civilization with destruction….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #134

20th March 2017

The Guardian reports: A new paper uses a new strategy to improve upon our understanding of ocean heating shows we are warming about 13% faster than we previously thought. Not only that but the warming has accelerated. Moreover, it is only since about 1990 that the warming has penetrated to depths below about 700 meters….

ALTERNATIVES

How renewable energy advocates are hurting the climate cause

19th March 2017

Paul McDivitt writes: Making wind and solar seem like they’re doing better than they really are could come back to bite proponents —and the climate. If people think we are about to replace fossil fuels with renewables, they will be less likely to demand new policies and take actions to lower their own carbon footprints….

Countercurrents.org

Conserve/Resist

Obituary: Veloor Swaminathan, who led a legendary fight against Coca Cola that’s finding new resonance

18th March 2017

K.P. Sasi writes: Swaminathan along with Mylamma were the initial foundations of the historic struggle at Plachimada, Kerala. The struggle initiated by a small group of these Adivasis with Dalits and farmers forced one of the largest corporate powers in the world to back down and quit Plachimada. Swaminathan passed away on March 14, 2015….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System

17th March 2017

John Bellamy Foster writes in the foreword: It’s capitalism and the alienated global environment it has produced that constitutes our “burning house” today. Mainstream environmentalists have generally chosen to do little more than contemplate it, while flames lick the roof and the entire structure threatens to collapse around them. The point, rather, is to change it….

ALTERNATIVES

Learning from the past: A new protocol for agricultural education and research in India

16th March 2017

We scientists, each one of us, should ask ourselves what the agricultural establishment needs to do in order effectively to address our current agricultural crisis. Given our present mechanistic scientific paradigm, we are part of the problem, and thus cannot, be part of its solution. Our first task, therefore, is to change our outlook fundamentally….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why trapped methane in the Arctic is a problem for all

15th March 2017

Dave Lindorff writes: The concern is that if the Arctic Ocean waters were to warm even slightly, as they will do as the ice cap vanishes in summer, at some point the clathrates which have currently trapped massive amounts of methane will suddenly dissolve releasing tens of thousands of gigatons of methane in huge bursts….

Korean steel giant POSCO is among several MNCs that have violated India's environmental norms

Reuters/Krishnendu Halde

Conserve/Resist

Indian govt is wary of foreign NGOs, but not corporations?

14th March 2017

Ritwick Dutta writes: India’s Environment minister recently urged his colleagues to be wary of foreign-funded NGOs. Ironically, his own party, the ruling BJP, was held guilty by the Delhi High Court for accepting funds from Vedanta, a UK-based company accused of gross environmental and human rights violations. Other violators include Lafarge, POSCO and Coca Cola….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The biggest refugee crisis since WWII is a sign of a planet in trouble

13th March 2017

David Korten writes that if don’t make a collective choice to heal the planet and build a fundamentally more equitable society, we’ll see intensifying competition for shrinking resources and habitable spaces. Activist Mary Robinson explains why climate change Is a threat to human rights and asks us to join the movement for worldwide climate justice….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #133

12th March 2017

iNews reports: The world is facing the “largest humanitarian crisis” since 1945, the United Nations has warned, with over 20 million people facing famine and starvation in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria. Stephen O’Brien, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, has called for international assistance to avoid a “catastrophe” that could see widespread death and devastation….

Digests/Specials

Six years later: A closer look at Fukushima

This day six years ago, tsunami waves crashed into Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, leading to a meltdown, which by one estimate continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific daily. A selection of reports and a lead article by M.V. Ramana, on what some have called history’s worst environmental disaster….

Conflict/Dispossession

Can India Inc. face the truth about the Manesar violence?

11th March 2017

Yesterday, a local court convicted 31, and acquitted 117 of the 148 workers charged with the murder of an HR manager at Maruti-Suzuki’s Manesar plant five years ago. The verdict once again puts the spotlight on the extreme exploitation and structural violence that characterise Indian industry, described by G. Sampath in this unforgettable 2012 article….

Kolkata's endangered wetlands provide invaluable ecological benefits to the city

ALTERNATIVES

When money does grow on trees

The services provided by Nature mostly bypasses markets, escapes pricing and defies valuation. Consider this. A 50-year-old tree provides services like oxygen, water recycling, soil conservation and pollution control worth Rs 23 lakh. Cutting and selling it fetches only Rs 50,000. Yet due to ignorance olf its ecological services, felling a tree seems more profitable….

Campaigners outside Pretoria high court during South Africa’s first climate change lawsuit.

James Oatway/CER

ALTERNATIVES

How climate change battles are increasingly being fought, and won, in court

10th March 2017

The Guardian reports: Around the world courts are stepping in when politicians fail to act, with South Africa’s government the latest to lose a groundbreaking climate lawsuit with judges ruling against its plans for a new coal-fired power station. The government’s approval of the proposed Thabametsi coal-fired power station was challenged by NGO EarthLife Africa….

A protest on August 8, 2013 in Delhi against the BRAI bill and Monsanto

Karan Vaid/Greenpeace

Education/Awareness

UN experts bust ‘myth’ that pesticides are necessary to feed the world

The Guardian reports: It’s a myth that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing global population, according to UN food and pollution experts. Their new report is severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments to obstruct reforms….

ALTERNATIVES

Five families that gave up city life for the rural dream

9th March 2017

TheNewsMinute reports: About a half-hour distance from the Tiruvannamalai government bus depot lies the Marudam Farm School in Kanathampoondi… It was in 2009 that the idea for the farm school was born when Govinda and his wife Leela came here for an afforestation project. It was then the couple dreamt of building a sustainable community….

Conserve/Resist

George Schaller: ‘India has far too casually allowed development in nature reserves’

Dr George Schaller, considered one of the finest field biologists in the world, and has a close connection to India. His work with tigers in Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha National Park, revolutionised wildlife research in India. He tells Scroll.in how Indian conservation has changed, why scientists need to engage with governments and what keeps him going….

Oil giant Exxon is facing an investigation for suppressing evidence of Climate Change in the late 1970s

CLIMATE CRISIS

Ben Chu: Financial markets are now betting against the future of the planet

8th March 2017

The Paris climate agreement was hailed by Al Gore as the moment when “the community of nations finally made the decision to act”. But there’s been no readjustment of energy stock prices since then. Indeed, the flotation of a tranche of Saudi oil giant Aramco, is expected to create the most valuable company on earth….