ALTERNATIVES
Padma Rigzin writes: Ladakh’s folk religion teaches that humans do not form the centre of the natural world but are merely inhabitants. So much so that my ancestors would not move a rock to build a house. Unfortunately, people in Leh are shouting the tune of the mainstream. Ambani has already started knocking our doors….
Read More about The fate of Ladakh in the Age of Ambani
PM Narendra Modi at Jammu's Chenani-Nashri Tunnel, India's longest road tunnel
Conflict/Dispossession
A slew of infrastructure projects in Kashmir, now a Union Territory, are now likely to be fast-tracked. These include road projects totalling 683.31 km, the marquee Zojila and Z-Morh tunnels, and several dam projects. This LiveMint article says the infrastructure push must be seen in the backdrop of China’s controversial China-Pakistan Economic Corridor next door….
Read More about Paradise imperilled: The ‘development’ onslaught awaiting Kashmir
ALTERNATIVES
From Mainstream Weekly: Dr. G. D. Agrawal (now Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) is one of India’s most distinguished environmental engineers, who served as the first Member-Secretary of India’s Central Pollution Control Board. Fasting for almost 100 days now to save the river Ganga, he’s now on his sixth, and in his own words, final “fast-unto-death”….
Read More about Why is the Indian govt silent on this 86-year-old’s fast for the river Ganga?
Representative Pic
Conflict/Dispossession
Pancheshwar Dam, kingpin of the river-linking project, will be the Himalayas’ largest reservoir. It’ll be located in one of india’s most seismically active areas, yet the project has been marred by shockingly poor environment appraisal. With little chances of it being economically viable, the project is nothing but a lucrative, contractor-friendly pipedream, writes Himanshu Thakkar….
Read More about Modi govt is building the world’s tallest dam – in earthquake-prone Himalayas!
ALTERNATIVES
The Indian Himalayan region is seeing a myriad of conflicts and challenges, and somehow increasing literacy levels or education is not providing the answers we urgently seek. Reliance on an education providing merely literacy, connecting people to a wider world, but alienating them from their environments, has done little good to people or their ecosystems….
Read More about Manshi Asher: Will the ‘educated’ save the environment?INDIA
So where are my reading glasses? Here, right in front of me, so close that I missed them. The lenses need cleaning. Some of Delhi’s smog still clings to them. Landour would not approve. And here I am, back on my hilltop, pen in hand, spectacles balanced on my nose. The new day has begun….
Read More about Ruskin Bond: Where have all the flowers gone?
A porter in the Himalayas
Kiril Rusev/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Conserve/Resist
From The Wire: Compared to farm, fishery and factory work, Himalayan porterage is rarely the subject of labour scholarship. For that matter, the forest protection and conservation labour of Adivasis and Dalits too rarely occupies the labour scholar’s interest… The biologically and culturally diverse eastern Himalayas are an apt geography to locate this labour-conservation conundrum….
Read More about Spotlight: The invisible conservation workers
Actress Dia Mirza with forest rangers at the Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand
Conserve/Resist
Dia Mirza writes: We cannot call this devastation of ecology and livelihoods ‘natural calamities’ anymore; it’s evident that there is a nexus of powerful people who are ignorant to the ramifications of their idea of “development” and “progress” that is gutting our forests, polluting our rivers and leading many states to a state of drought….
Read More about Dia Mirza on the Uttarakhand fires and how we fail our forests
The Ice Stupa team with Indian Army volunteers at Lhonak lake
icestupa.org
ALTERNATIVES
Sonam Wangchuk, the real life inspiration of the character “Phunsuk Wangdu” in Bollywood hit “3 idiots”, recently led an expedition to Sikkim’s Lhonak lake, which has been declared dangerous. Their objective was to install a siphoning system to drain the lake and prevent climate disaster, probably the first project of its kind in the world….
Read More about Photo story: Draining a glacial lake in Sikkim to prevent climate disaster
ALTERNATIVES
Peter Smetacek writes: The question, naturally, is: What are we hoping to achieve by the process of planting forests? Because we don’t have a clear answer, it is no surprise that there is not a single success story in all the “watershed management” and “afforestation” drives that the public has paid for throughout the country….
Read More about How India’s forests have been lost in translation – in plantations
Nuno Andre Ferreira
CLIMATE CRISIS
There are almost 400 fires in the Himalayan foothills currently, which have killed five people and finished off at least 19 square kilometres of forest. The timber mafia and ordinary folks are known to illegally set fire in the Himalayan foothills, to fell trees, but its uncontrollable nature this year also points to micro-climatic changes….
Read More about Digest: The manmade forest fires of the Himalayan foothills
