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environmentalism

ALTERNATIVES

Latin America signs landmark agreement to protect environmental activists

22nd March 2018

Brazil, Colombia and Mexico top the list of countries where the most people die defending a patch of earth, a mountain, or a river. The region where most environmental activists die annually is taking action with a new landmark agreement. The “Escazu Accord” is only the second regional agreement on environmentalists’ rights in the world….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Uttarakhand’s Kosi river is dying; only an immediate intervention will save it

27th February 2018

From Catch News: Uttarakhand’s Kosi river is dying, which could spell doom for the region. Data from the last 25 years shows that the lean flow capacity of the river during summers has witnessed a massive, over 700%, drop, while the river’s total length has reduced from 225 kilometers to just 41 in 40 years….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Alternative Futures: India Unshackled

13th February 2018

A remarkable, first-ever collection of essays on India’s future, by a diverse set of authors – activists, researchers, media practitioners – those who have influenced policies and those working at the grassroots. It presents scenarios of an India that is politically and socially egalitarian, radically democratic, ecologically sustainable and economically equitable, and socio-culturally diverse and harmonious….

Medha Patkar campaigning for the Aam Aadmi Party in Mumbai

Joe Athialy

ALTERNATIVES

Three interviews: Medha Patkar, Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres and Nonhle Mbuthuma

31st January 2018

From The Transnational Institute: Women everywhere are leading struggles against corporate crimes and defending their communities and the dignity of all people, risking their lives in the process. To introduce our 2018 report on counter-power, we interviewed three women activists who have displayed incredible courage, determination and creativity to confront corporate power and state violence….

Conserve/Resist

Tami Nadu’s green warriors: Six environmentalists you should know about

23rd January 2018

From The News Minute: These six environmental activists, not all of them well known, have been at the forefront of the fight against encroachment, destruction and contamination of the natural environment across Tamil Nadu. Also included is the video of a talk by one of the activists featured, Nityanand Jayaraman, on ‘A world without corporations.’…

Conserve/Resist

Will India lose one of its last patches of Jurassic forest?

21st January 2018

From Down to Earth: Kathalekan, in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, is a relic forest with Myristica swamp ecosystem. It has remained unchanged for over 100 million years. It’s spread across an area of 25 square kilometres. Today this ancient forest is under severe threat from human interventions in the region, including a proposed highway….

ALTERNATIVES

The fierce urgency of “how”

20th January 2018

Peter Buffet writes: Reconsider. Everything. Is it feeding fear? Is it feeding off trauma? Is it creating more suffering? Most of our institutions will crumble under the weight of these questions. And when we have reconsidered the lives we have built, how will we live? Look to the people that are weathering the early storms….

ALTERNATIVES

Tata’s army: The green warriors who risk their lives to protect a Philippine paradise

1st January 2018

From The Guardian: Palawan is the Philippines’ last ecological frontier, home to most of the nation’s remaining forests and renowned as a global biological hotspot. But its also a magnet for those seeking to plunder the island’s natural wealth. PNNI, a small group of civilian para-enforcers are taking the rainforest’s protection into their own hands….

ALTERNATIVES

The 2017 movements and victories that give us reason to hope

31st December 2017

The bad news streaming through our media in 2017 has been relentless. However it doesn’t tell the full story. Beyond the headlines, there have countless amazing social movement struggles in different regions of the world that deserve to be celebrated. Here are ten stories showing that people power works, courtesy the Transnational Institute‘s 2017 recap….

ALTERNATIVES

To embrace the transition, we must go beyond ‘environmentalism’

29th December 2017

Erik Lindberg writes: In contrast to a conflictual and adversarial approach to activism, which aims at victory over those who stand in the way of progress, the Transition model and the community spaces it creates, open doors for the sort of narrative whereby we accept responsibility and move forward with recognition of our collective errors….

Conserve/Resist

Uma Shankari: An open letter to Sadhguru (and other “Hurry Babas”)

11th September 2017

Nowadays there are no pilots, there are no independent evaluations, no concept of conflict of interest. I am wondering if this is also the case even in your “Rally for Rivers”. This letter’s not just about your rally, but expresses my concerns about “development” in this country. And how the Babas are all in it….

ALTERNATIVES

Light, bright or dark – what shade of green are you?

31st July 2017

Kari McGregor writes: The green movement is no longer unified, if it ever really was. Bright Green, Lite Green, Bright Green and Dark Green tribes form around divergent worldviews, theories of change, an accepted range of tactics. Each tribe vies for attention to its message in a world of time-constrained news cycles and manufactured consumerism….

ALTERNATIVES

Layla and the owl’s eyes: Ecopsychology and being human

24th July 2017

Will Falk writes: Just like an owl on a chain is no longer an owl, and an elephant in a zoo is no longer an elephant, humans cut off from the nature are no longer human. We are animals and animals are an ongoing process of relationships. When those relationships become impossible, we lose ourselves….

Save Western Ghats group/Facebook

ALTERNATIVES

Tribute: A mountain and a movement: the Save Western Ghats March

23rd July 2017

From The Hindu: Straddling six states, the 1600-odd kilometre-long Western Ghats is home to an astonishing diversity of life and supports innumerable communities and cultures. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the remarkable 100-day ‘Save Western Ghats March’, a landmark event in Indian environmental activism, which became the model for numerous campaigns to follow….

ALTERNATIVES

Satya Sagar: What on earth is a human being?

16th July 2017

Satya Sagar writes: It’s time to step back, reflect and ask again and again the questions: who or what exactly are human beings, how we should live in this world and where we should go? For this time the very survival of the human species may lie in getting the answers right with great honesty….

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.”…

Frida Kahlo

ALTERNATIVES

Fight back: An ecopsychological understanding of depression

6th July 2017

Will Falk writes: I’m an environmental activist. I have depression. To be an activist with depression places me squarely in an irreconcilable dilemma: The destruction of the natural world creates stress which exacerbates depression. However, acting to stop the destruction of the natural world exposes me to a lot of stress which, again, exacerbates depression….

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….

Bookshelf

‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene

17th June 2017

From The Guardian: The chief reason that we’re waking up to our entanglement with the world we’ve been destroying, Timothy Morton says, is our encounter with the reality of hyperobjects –the term he coined to describe things such as ecosystems and black holes, which are “massively distributed in time and space” compared to individual humans….

Stephanie McMillan

ALTERNATIVES

Environmentalism used to be about defending the wild – not any more

13th June 2017

From The Guardian: According to Paul Kingsnorth, environmentalism’s increasingly urban mindset means that instead of defending wild places we now spend our time arguing how to best domesticate these wild places –deserts, oceans, mountains– to generate the “green” energy needed to fuel things that, until recently, we couldn’t even imagine, let alone claim to need….