CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Wire: This specific patch of some 1,000 acres near Dargah Honnur village in Anantapur district –once covered by millet cultivation– has over many decades become more and more a desert. That has been driven by often paradoxical factors –and created the kind of space that filmmakers send out location scouts to look for….
Read More about P. Sainath: How a patch of Anantapur came to be a desertConflict/Dispossession
From 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 desertsCLIMATE CRISIS
Scroll.in reports: These timelapse videos were created with images of Landsat Satellite showing massive global transformations from 1984 to 2012 via Google Earth. Timelapse events include transformations such as the coastal expansion of Dubai, the retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, Saudi Arabian desert, Amazonian forest land in Brazil and Las Vegas urban growth….
Read More about Watch: 10 extraordinary timelapse videos show earth’s transformation in 30 years
Food/Farming
Indira Khurana writes: A whopping 25 per cent of India’s total land (329 mn ha) is undergoing desertification while 32 per cent (105 mn ha) is facing degradation that has reduced productivity, critically affecting livelihoods and food security of millions across the country. Combating desertification brings together three interdependent natural resources: Land, water and biodiversity….
Read More about A desert storm is engulfing India
Education/Awareness
Chethan Kumar reports: The recently Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas, is a first-of-its-kind attempt to present the latest research and raise awareness on the role of soil organisms. Bangalore-based scientist D.J. Bagyaraj, the only Indian contributor to the Atlas, talks about the vital role of soil biodiversity for sustainable food production and prevention of land degradation….
Read More about Interview: DJ Bagyaraj – India’s only contributor to the Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas
ALTERNATIVES
Rocco Pallin writes: Thirty-three percent of soil worldwide is degraded, and 50,000 square kilometers of soil are lost each year. Soil is not a renewable resource and “isn’t recoverable within a human lifespan,” but sustainable practices could increase the world’s food production by 58 percent. Here are seven projects helping to restore the world’s soil….
Read More about Seven projects around the world that protect soil
ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said Chris Arsenault, Reuters ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation…
Read More about Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continuesECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
War, pestilence, even climate change, are trifles by comparison. Destroy the soil and we all starve. George Monbiot Imagine a wonderful world, a planet on which there was no threat of climate breakdown, no loss of freshwater, no antibiotic resistance, no obesity crisis, no terrorism, no war. Surely, then, we would be out of major…
Read More about George Monbiot: Soil – the crisis to beat them all?CLIMATE CRISIS
Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change The New York Times India’s coal mining plans may represent the biggest obstacle to a global climate pact to be negotiated at a conference in Paris next year. “If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the…
Read More about News updateConflict/Dispossession
25 percent of India’s total land is undergoing desertification while 32 percent is facing degradation that has affected its productivity, critically affecting livelihoods and food security of millions across the country. As much as 105.19 million hectares of the country’s total geographical area of 328.73 Mha is being degraded while 82.18 Mha is undergoing desertification….
Read More about A quarter of India is slowly turning into desert
