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Conflict/Dispossession

Demonetisation has failed: Farmers’ anger is the final piece of evidence

18th June 2017

R. Jagannathan, Editor, Swarajya Magazine, writes: It is time for a mea culpa on demonetisation. This writer has been largely positive on the medium-to-long-term benefits of notebandi, as opposed to its short-term downsides. Now, especially after the farmer agitations for loan waivers, I believe the negative side is larger than the positive. It has failed….

Conflict/Dispossession

P. Sainath: Why are our farmers angry?

17th June 2017

From People’s Archive of Rural India: From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra out on the streets, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?…

A scene after violent clashes between farmers and the police at Pipliya in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh

PTI

Conflict/Dispossession

Ground Report: How demonetisation brought MP farmers onto streets

13th June 2017

This series of timely reports from Hindustan Times surveys the explosive situation in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur district, epicenter of the violent protests that left six farmers dead from police bullets. The lead article looks at the impact of demonetisation in creating the crisis, while another report examines the role of social media in organising farmers….

AFP

Conflict/Dispossession

Harsh Singh Lohit: Why do farmers protest?

12th June 2017

Why, please ask yourself, does the city get 24 hour electricity, schools, colleges, dispensaries, hospitals, roads, public transport, even cooking gas and the village either not at all or services that are a pale shadow of their urban selves? Why this inequality in allocation of resources, even though 68.84% of Indians live in rural areas?…

Vehicles set on fire by agitating farmers in Madhya Pradesh on June 7, 2017.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why a bountiful harvest drove farmers to despair and anger

10th June 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….

Conflict/Dispossession

Prafulla Samantara, a “Maoist” for Vedanta and Odisha, earns global recognition

27th April 2017

From The Citizen: For his leading role in the historic 12-year legal battle that led to the protection of the indigenous Dongria Kondh tribe’s land rights against the mining giant Vedanta in Niyamgiri, Odisha, social activist Prafulla Samantara was chosen one of the six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, or the ‘Green Nobel’….

Adani group chairman Gautam Adani is known to be close to PM Modi

ENERGY

Vaishali Patil: Exposing Adani’s environmental and labour abuses

16th April 2017

I’ve come face to face with some of the world’s worst companies, but at the top of that list is mining giant Adani, which wants to develop one of the world’s largest coalmines in Australia, supposedly to meet demand from India. But the communities I work with patently do not want Adani or its coal….

Conflict/Dispossession

Is the fight over a gas pipeline fuelling the world’s bloodiest conflict?

14th April 2017

With the U.S. and Russia headed for a direct confrontation in Syria, the war in that country is moving a new, more dangerous phase. The Syrian war often seems like a big confusing mess but one factor that’s not often mentioned could be the key to unlocking the conflict: the struggle to control energy markets….

ALTERNATIVES

Goenchi Mati: A call for environmental custodianship and inter-generational equity in mining

9th April 2017

Rahul Basu writes: Goa Foundation, one of the country’s best-known environmental groups, has proposed a whole new approach to mining that’s designed to tackle the colossal damage caused by rampant corruption and human greed. It can be applied globally to natural resources and commons generally, but starting with minerals as their economic values are clearer….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Historic verdict in Indonesia’s fight against deforestation

7th April 2017

From Friends of the Earth: The 2015 Indonesian forest fires, started by farmers and palm-oil companies to clear land for plantation, lasted for months and caused massive air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, at one point releasing more carbon dioxide than the entire U.S. economy, and causing an estimated 100,000 premature deaths in the region….

Conflict/Dispossession

El Salvador makes history as first nation to impose blanket ban on metal mining

5th April 2017

The Guardian reports: El Salvador has made history after becoming the first country in the world to ban metal mining. Cristina Starr, from Radio Victoria, said: “Today water won over gold. This historic victory is down to the clarity and determination of the Salvadoran people fighting for life over the economic interests of a few.”…

Conflict/Dispossession

As Posco exits steel project, Odisha is left with thousands of felled trees and lost livelihoods

31st March 2017

Scroll reports: Twelve years and several twists and turns later, the South Korean steel major has officially withdrawn from the project. With this development, the net result of the Odisha government’s most ambitious industrialisation dream is lakhs of felled trees, thousands of promised jobs that never materialised, and frustrated villagers staring at an uncertain future….

A truck leaves an illegal sand mine by the Yamuna in Greater Noida

http://ismenvis.nic.in

Development/Growth

How to steal a river: New York Times on India’s rampant sand mining

7th March 2017

The hundreds of millions of Indians migrating from villages to cities require up to a billion square yards of new real estate development annually. Current construction already draws more than 800 million tons of sand every year, mostly from India’s waterways. All the people I spoke to assumed that much of it is taken illegally….

ALTERNATIVES

Herman Daly: Thoughts on Pope Francis’ Laudato Si

6th March 2017

The pioneering American economist who helped found the discipline of Ecological Economics, and presently a leading theorist of ‘steady-state economics’, muses on Pope Francis’ ground-breaking encyclical on environment and justice. “At a minimum, he’s given us a more truthful, informed, and courageous analysis of the environmental and moral crisis than have our secular political leaders.”…

ALTERNATIVES

Court issues ruling in world’s first “Rights of Nature” lawsuit

Intercontinentalcry.org reports: On January 11, 2017 Ecuador’s Esmeraldas Provincial Court handed down its decision on the world’s first constitutionally-based Rights of Nature lawsuit. Amazingly, this historic demand for justice—which simultaneously begs for a shift in merely human rights-based paradigms—was made by people who literally and figuratively live in Ecuador’s margins: The Canton of San Lorenzo….

Conflict/Dispossession

Tribute: Berta Cáceres, an outspoken voice for nature that was silenced

3rd March 2017

This day a year ago, Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. She and her associates had faced death threats for standing up to mining and dam projects that threatened to destroy their community. A tribute to her fighting spirit on her first death anniversary….

Conflict/Dispossession

I want children – but my fears for the planet’s future fill me with doubt

1st March 2017

We are coming into an era of huge uncertainty–climate change is a reality, resources are becoming more scarce and I this will eventually lead to armed conflict. While my partner and I are in the extremely fortunate position, I feel that it would be unfair of me to bring a child into a precarious future….

Conflict/Dispossession

Kaziranga: The park that shoots people to protect rhinos

18th February 2017

In Kaziranga national park, rangers shoot people to protect rhinos. The park features in a new BBC investigation, which highlights some of the conflicts that characterise contemporary conservation, as the need to protect endangered species comes into contact with the lives and rights of people who live in and around the increasingly threatened national parks….

INDIA

Environ-Mental? The bizarre ‘green’ ideas of our netas

12th February 2017

India Water Portal reports: The year 2016 was an abysmal year in terms of environmental policy and conservation in India. There were also many initiatives worth talking about. Any initiative, however, is only as good as those managing it. Here we talk about four people in the country who made news for their water-related actions….

Conflict/Dispossession

Amitav Ghosh: What nutmeg can tell us about globalisation

23rd January 2017

From The New York Times: …It is impossible to imagine a world without global connections: They have always existed, and no place has escaped their formative influence. But this does not mean that there is any inherent merit in interconnectedness, which has always been accompanied by violence, deepening inequalities and the large-scale destruction of communities….