development devastation Archives - Page 4 of 4

Conflict/Dispossession

Nivedita Khandekar: Why floods in Assam and Bihar are worsening over time

22nd July 2017

From Daily O: Two important things stand out: lack of information at the grassroots level and the attitude of policymakers, and to some extent people too, towards dealing with floods. Assam’s information network has improved, but population explosion forces people to risk lives for a few weeks of floods by living at the river bank….

Development/Growth

From Bangalore to Srinagar, India’s lakes are dead in the water

18th July 2017

From Hindustan Times: The NGT has repeatedly criticised Bengaluru’s civic authorities this year for letting the city’s water bodies become toxic waste dumps. The central body could find similarly mistreated lakes in countless Indian cities, where wetlands are being lost due to urbanisation, changes in land use and pollution. What lakes have survived are shrinking….

Conflict/Dispossession

Three times rise in killings of India’s land, eco-defenders: Modi govt blamed for “stifling opposition” by any means

15th July 2017

From Counterview/Global Witness: A just-released global report has revealed that the number of land and environment defenders killed in India has almost trebled, from 6 in 2015 to 16 in 2016, blaming it on “a disturbing trend” of increasing police brutality, indicating the Modi government’s determination “to stifle opposition to ‘development’ by any means necessary.”…

Conflict/Dispossession

A grain of truth: RCEP and the corporate hijack of Indian agriculture

13th July 2017

Colin Todhunter writes in Countercurrents.org: A combination of debt, economic liberalisation, subsidised imports, rising input costs and a shift to cash crops (including GM-cotton) has caused massive financial distress to small farmers in India. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a trade deal now being negotiated by 16 countries across Asia-Pacific, could accelerate this process….

Untreated effluents dumped into Sabarmati downstream of Vasna barrage, which is the dead-end of Sabarmati Riverfont

Amruta Pradhan/SANDRP

Conflict/Dispossession

Sabarmati riverfront, inland waterways, Mahanadi dispute, are all newer forms of onslaught on rivers

11th July 2017

From Counterview.org: The Sabarmati River Front has been in the news lately as a model of “river beautification”. When in reality, it is a dead river, filled with effluents and sewage. It was “rejuvenated” with Narmada water, which came at a great cost of the displacement of lakhs of people and destruction of the environment….

View of a neighbourhood destroyed after landslide in Manizales, Colombia

Reuters/Santiago Osorio

Development/Growth

Why landslides have been leading to a higher loss of life in recent times

5th July 2017

From The Wire: Why are landslides are proving so costly in terms of loss of human lives in recent years? Relentless deforestation leads to denudation of the hills, making them more vulnerable to landslides. Another factor is that without giving due consideration to vulnerability of certain areas, indiscriminate construction and mining activities are taken up….

Conflict/Dispossession

Mining in Gadchiroli – building a castle of injustices

4th July 2017

From Countercurrents.org: This article is about the struggle to save the rich, dense and old growth forests in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra by the Madia Gond adivasis residing in these forests. Communities like theirs don’t celebrate World Environment Day, but it is in their struggles that the ecological and cultural wellbeing of our country currently rests….

Conflict/Dispossession

Spotlight: China’s communist-capitalist ecological apocalypse

26th June 2017

From Truthout.org: This superbly researched 2015 paper explains why China’s unfolding environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than “normal” capitalism almost everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. It should serve as a warning for India, whose official policies increasingly mimic the ‘China model’….

Protests gather pace across Narmada Valley after the Supreme Court asks the government to relocate all affected families by July 31

Narmada Bachao Andolan

Conflict/Dispossession

What Gujarat govt calls ‘historic’, could be catastrophic for 1,00,000 villagers

23rd June 2017

Fifty-six years after the foundation stone for the Sardar-Sarovar dam on the Narmada was laid, the Gujarat government has got permission from the Centre to shut its gates. It will open the gates of misery for more than 100,000 people, whose houses and land are likely to get submerged. A Down To Earth ground report….

Yale Environment 360

Conflict/Dispossession

Tribute: Bill Kayong, Malaysian activist who fought to protect native forests

21st June 2017

From Yale Environment 360: On this day last year, Bill Kayong, an up-and-coming political activist in Miri, a coastal oil town in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, was shot dead. At the time, Kayong was leading a campaign to protect native forest lands and stop incursions on traditional lands by logging and palm oil companies….

Conflict/Dispossession

How the disastrous Ken-Betwa link project endangers India’s tigers, rivers and mountains

1st June 2017

Ken-Betwa river-linking project, if realised, will destroy livelihoods and ecology, including a portion of the Panna Tiger Reserve. Curiously enough, ground reports show that farmers in the project area are themselves not keen on it. Also included is a documentary, ‘Links of a Broken Chain’, as well as a detailed technical analysis of the project….

Conserve/Resist

Vanishing Borneo: Saving one of the world’s last great places

25th May 2017

From Yale Environment 360: Borneo is ground zero for oil palm devastation. The most ancient and species-rich forest on earth, it has also had highest deforestation rate on the planet, and in recorded history. Consumers of the countless products made with palm oil, from toothpaste to chocolate bars, now hold the key to protecting it….

Breakwater being constructed for Adani's Vizhinjam port

Dredgingtoday.com

Conflict/Dispossession

Sagarmala: The Rs 10 trillion project that is wrecking India’s coast

24th May 2017

From DNA: Sagarmala is the Indian Government’s Rs 10 lakh crore programme to build Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) and industrial clusters around 14 key ports. But, the Sagarmala plan document lays out its goals as if the coast has been an empty or unproductive space, and is now poised to be a “gateway” to growth….

Conflict/Dispossession

China’s ‘new Silk Road’ could expand Asia’s deserts

20th May 2017

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….