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inspiration & musings

A village council meeting being held in Barkheda village to discuss community issues

Ishan Agrawal

ALTERNATIVES

How one village’s successful tryst with self-governance inspired others

13th August 2017

From The Wire: With a predominantly tribal population, Barkheda is a typical central Indian village. A few years ago, the villagers took charge of their natural resources and established a village executive committee. The committee governs all the water bodies of Barkheda, which now has rules on water usage, based on the principles of equity….

ALTERNATIVES

Rooted Truth: On India’s only private wildlife sanctuary

7th August 2017

From Infinite Windows/Eartha Mag: 23 years ago, the passionate conservationist couple Pamela and Anil Malhotra bought 55 acres of land in Coorg, which they have since converted into a beautiful forest of over 300 acres. This is the story of how SAI Sanctuary came to host animals like the Bengal Tiger, Sambhar and Asian Elephants….

Culture/Cognition

Art Eco 1: The ethereal beauty of ‘Bioluminescent Forest’

Nature has always inspired art, but in our own age of ecological crisis, it’s taking on a special significance for many contemporary artists. This series looks at path-breaking artists and works that reflect this growing awareness. Here, watch artist-filmmakers Friedrich van Schoor and Tarek Mawad turn trees, mushrooms, and even toads into pulsing, projection-mapped creatures….

ALTERNATIVES

On rewilding the imagination

5th August 2017

Rob Hopkins writes: The Wild Network’s mission is “to support children, parents and guardians to roam free, play wild and connect with nature”. According to their ‘Chief Wild Officer’ Mark Sears, mental well-being is proven to be clearly linked to time spent outdoors in natural environments, but this is neglected by modern schooling and parenting….

ALTERNATIVES

Tribute: Murray Bookchin and the ecology of freedom

30th July 2017

Here’s a thinker, who in the 1960s, declared climate change as a defining problem of the age. Who accused his fellow environmentalists of advocating mere “technical fixes” of capitalism, instead of addressing root causes. But today, his ideas are enjoying an unexpected revival. Damian White pays tribute to Murray Bookchin, who died on this day in 2006….

Bookshelf

Bookshelf: Indica—A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent

27th July 2017

Amita Baviskar writes: Pranay Lal’s Indica, describes the first 4,600 million years of the subcontinent, comprising a cast of fascinating characters in a drama that begins with the Big Bang and closes with the arrival of Homo sapiens, present-day humans, in India some 70,000 years ago. But along with sparking appreciation, it also raises apprehensions….

The Hindu

Conserve/Resist

How a holy hill got its groves back

24th July 2017

From The Hindu: An afforestation initiative led by naturalists and locals, with support from forest and revenue department officials, has resulted in the Arunachala hill in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, shedding its barren, brown visage. Lalitha Sridhar reports on the decade-plus-long turnaround of a damaged fragile, semi-arid ecosystem by successfully harnessing scientific expertise and local knowledge….

ALTERNATIVES

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

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….

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….

ALTERNATIVES

David Bamberger: Love of the land

In the 1960’s David Bamberger owned a successful fried chicken business with over 1600 outlets in the United States (For perspective, there are less than 400 KFC’s in India today.) Then he decided to sell off his business and put the capital into buying some 5500 acres of the most degraded land he could find…

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….

ALTERNATIVES

Felix Padel: Adivasi economics may be the only hope for India’s future

28th June 2017

India’s Tribal communities are under extreme pressure, right from big dams and mines to violent insurgencies and militarisation engulfing their lands. In 25 years, will these communities cease to exist? Or, will they represent thriving, revitalised models of egalitarian sustainability that the rest of the world has come to recognise and is learning from? Felix…

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Spearfishing champ, chef and artist Kimi Werner on living in nature

In this wonderful TEDx talk, Kimi Werner, a free diver and fish hunter, uses her life’s story to illustrate a key lesson she learnt – that of slowing down when everything tells you to speed up. What really shines through is how her childhood memories of living in nature shaped her experiences later in life….

ALTERNATIVES

Vinchurni: A story of rejuvenated land, water and wilderness

21st June 2017

From Vikalp Sangam: Located in the village Vinchurni, in Maharashtra’s Satara district, the 100-acre Maganlal Gandhi Smrutivan was originally a rocky grassland, that has since been transformed into a fertile estate that now teems with various interdependent lives. Behind this makeover is the 89-year-old former ‘Bhoodan’ activist Babulal Gandhi, aka Babu Kaka, and his family….

Yale Environment 360

Conflict/Dispossession

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

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….

Conserve/Resist

A teenage philatelist explains what butterflies can teach us about the ecosystem – and human spirit

14th June 2017

From Scroll.in: Thirteen-year-old Ramprasad Mahurkar, part of a long tradition of artists, writers and scientists obsessed with butterflies, says: “I love butterflies because they are beautiful and inspiring. A large proportion of the earth’s food crops are pollinated by butterflies, plus they’ve been studied to understand the phenomena of evolution and the role of genetics.”…

James Fryer/ Gear Patrol

Consumerism/Lifestyle

World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity

11th June 2017

Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….

Joel Sternfeld

ALTERNATIVES

Paul Kingsnorth: The Axis and the Sycamore

8th June 2017

The Axial Age, which refers to the historical period between the eighth and third centuries BC, was a period of profound transformations, which created “the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today,” a period of collapse from which emerged new ways of seeing and being… We may be living through a second Axial Age now……

Paresh Nath/The Khaleej Times

Conserve/Resist

Why the fight for environmental justice is also a fight for social justice

6th June 2017

Nityanand Jayaraman writes: June 5 was World Environment Day. Over the last few days, this author, an environmental activist, has been asked by many people to lay out things that people can do without really straining their daily schedules. These simple things may not exist anymore. Instead, here are six things for everyone to consider….