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CLIMATE CRISIS

Heat waves are getting worse, but these simple measures can save many lives

30th April 2017

Gulrez Shah Azhar writes: This summer’s shaping up to be especially bad in India. Satellite images show large areas dried up from lack of water. Without access to water, heat waves become particularly deadly. But heat deaths are preventable and simple measures could save lives. Here are three actions that would make an enormous difference….

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’….

Amit Dave/Reuters

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why increasing India’s solar energy capacity won’t work

23rd April 2017

From The Wire: The planned ten-fold increase in solar energy will add on an average only 20% of the total capacity, making little difference to India’s emissions. The government has not reduced its coal output targets and plans to raise coal output from the current 550 million tonnes to nearly a billion tonnes by 2022….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Study: A minor change in your diet can reduce water use for agriculture

22nd April 2017

A new modeling study published in The Lancet suggests that India’s agricultural need for water can be met if Indians introduce minor diet changes. Research team leader Alan Dangour tells Down to Earth that “dietary change is a potential way to improve resilience of the Indian food system in the face of future groundwater decline.”…

A Jarawa tribal receiving handout from tourist - a scene from the Andaman Trunk Road

Scmp.com

Bookshelf

How a statist vision of development has brought Andaman’s tribals close to extinction

21st April 2017

Excerpt from Islands in Flux, by Pankaj Sekhsaria: These communities of thousands of individuals with a living lineage going back thousands of years have been brought to this sorry state in a mere 150 years. It began with the British and their policies, which have been kept up with clinical efficiency by modern, independent India….

Kalpataru, the divine tree of life, depicted at the 8th century Pawon temple, Java

Indiafacts.info

ALTERNATIVES

What modern ecology can learn from ancient Hinduism

19th April 2017

Viva Kermani writes: Hinduism is the world’s largest nature based religion that recognises and seeks the Divine in nature and acknowledges everything as sacred. A loss of this understanding that earth is our mother, or rather a deliberate ignorance of this, has resulted in the abuse, and the exploitation of the earth and its resources….

J. Vijaya, India's first female herpetologist, lived alone for many months in a forest cave in Kerala to study cane turtles

Zai Whitaker

Conserve/Resist

Tribute: Viji, the Turtle Girl

18th April 2017

This day thirty years ago, the bodily remains of J. Vijaya, India’s first female herpetologist and turtle field biologist, was found in a forest. She was only 28. The cause of her death remains unknown to this day. A moving tribute to one of the most memorable personalities in Indian wildlife conservation, by Janaki Lenin….

Gujarat-based Amul kick-started the milk revolution in India

Consumerism/Lifestyle

How Indians started drinking milk (and what it has cost us)

17th April 2017

Many people think that milk is normal good food. But a large part of the world until recently never consumed the milk of other animals. Even today, Eastern Asia as a rule does not use milk. So, for some, milk is the greatest food, while for others, milk is one of the five white poisons….

Conserve/Resist

10 rousing struggles for public water

From TNI.org: While water privatisation continues to be imposed throughout the world, particularly in the Global South, more and more communities are demanding public management of water (also labelled remunicipalisation) and wastewater services and forcing out private actors. Here are 10 inspiring stories of communities and cities working to reclaim control over this essential resource….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Early heat wave baking India is a sign of worse to come

16th April 2017

Climate Central reports: The early heat this year is due to a shift in wind patterns that has seen air flowing in from the south and west, across dry areas that quickly cause that air to warm. That heat-waves will become more common and intense is one of the clearest outcomes of human-driven global warming….

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

ENERGY

Vaishali Patil: Exposing Adani’s environmental and labour abuses

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….

A child labourer cries as he is rescued in a joint operation by Labour dept. and an NGO in Delhi

Reuters/Adnan Abidi

Education/Awareness

‘India has world’s best anti-slavery laws’ (and largest number of slaves)

15th April 2017

IndiaSpend reports: Nearly 46 million people live under conditions of slavery across the world, with 18 million (39%) of those in India, home to the world’s largest number of slaves, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. They have lost their freedom by way of bonded and domestic labour and sexual slavery, among other means….

Conflict/Dispossession

Are farmers ‘collateral damage’ of India’s economic growth?

14th April 2017

People living in villages, who are migrating in large numbers to cities, could be victims of our economic development or perhaps the dismal income growth of farm households is semi-deliberate to keep labour costs low… Are our rural brothers victims or collateral damage of economic development, of a deliberate though unstated strategy, asks Sanjiv Phansalkar….

The fishing community in Vizhinjam, Kerala, now threatened by a port being built by the Adani Group

Conflict/Dispossession

‘If we go on like this, the entire mass of small fishers will be wiped out.’

12th April 2017

The Indian coastline no longer belongs to its traditional custodians— the small fisher people. A jamboree of development —cities, SEZs, power plants, ports, sand mining— is eating up the coastline and eroding it beyond repair. Debasis Shyamal of the National Fishworkers’ Forum speaks to Sayantan Bera on the present and future of India’s traditional fishers….

P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India

Education/Awareness

The precarious situation of India’s water problem

11th April 2017

Hari Pulakkat writes: The country’s water data has been largely hidden from public view, and what was available was poor or untrustworthy. This brings up a question rarely asked by policymakers. If scientists find it difficult to analyse the country’s water resources at the moment, how valid are the reports that forecast India’s water future?…

Bookshelf

Red alert: A timeline for global collapse

This review by Alice Friedmann of Nafeez Ahmed’s new book has 3 parts: 1) Why states collapse for reasons other than economic and political 2) How Bio-Physical factors contribute to systemic collapse in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria 3) Predictions of when collapse will begin in Middle-East, India, China, Europe, Russia, North America…

Rohan Chakravarty

INDIA

What does it mean for a river to have rights?

10th April 2017

From The Hindu: The rights do not stem from an intrinsic identity or status of the river, but more from their use for humans; and giving them ‘personhood’ or legal status makes it very human-centred. Can rivers not be recognised as having identity, worth, dignity, and rights as intrinsic qualities, not because they serve us?…

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….

Economy

Devinder Sharma: Does the banking system really want to help farmers?

8th April 2017

The total outstanding loans of public sector banks stands at Rs 6.8 lakh crores. Of this, 70% belongs to the corporate sector, whereas only 1% of the defaulters are farmers. Why’s the banking system designed to favour the rich who already have many perks, while the poor pay a higher price to sustain their livelihoods?…

Volunteers taking readings to map the shoreline

Vivek Coelho

CLIMATE CRISIS

Fishers turn climate scientists to save beaches

7th April 2017

India Climate Dialogue reports: A community-managed shoreline monitoring project in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry is tracking changes to beaches to safeguard an ecosystem that is vital for the livelihoods of fishing communities. “A Tide Turns” is a community science initiative that has helped turn more than 120 people from local fishing communities into climate scientists….