Forests/Wildlife
Anuja Mital writes: A year ago, on this day, a young 23-year-old wildlife researcher and my classmate, Prashanth Ettaboina, passed away. Ever the optimist, and crazy about tigers like no one else, the news of his suicide shocked us all –although till date there has been no satisfying inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death….
Read More about In memory of Prashanth Ettaboina: A passionate life cut short
ALTERNATIVES
Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The final installment in a series of four….
Read More about Earthbag Diaries 4: Finishing touches, and lessons learned the old-fashioned way
Atulya Bingham at the mud home she built in Turkey
ALTERNATIVES
If I were into species research, I would declare the discovery of Atulya Bingham as that rare new species that the world desperately needs. If I were a birder she’d be that exotic bird whose sight delights one every time. She is rare because she writes about nature in a way no one else does….
Read More about A relation of love with the land
U. Subbaraju with his students from Timbaktu Collective
P.V. Sivakumar/The Hindu
ALTERNATIVES
Ajit Ranade writes: Mahatma Gandhi famously said that the world has enough for everybody’s need, but not for everybody’s greed. U. Subbaraju, a person who actually lived this principle in his own quiet life, who always carried a gentle smile and a helping hand, passed away earlier this month. He was just 50 years old….
Read More about Obituary: U. Subbaraju – A life lived from first principlesConserve/Resist
From The Guardian: Indian winners of this year’s prestigious ‘green Oscars’ are Purnima Barman, who has been inspiring women to protect Assam’s greater adjutant stork and its habitat, and Sanjay Gubbi, who has been working on reducing deforestation in Karnataka’s tiger corridors. Whitley Awards are donated by the Shears Foundation in memory of Trevor Shears….
Read More about Winners of the Whitley Awards for nature conservation 2017
Siddharth at his thatched-roof home at Netrampakkam
Shriya Mohan
ALTERNATIVES
From The Hindu: Ten years ago Siddharth, an IIT-IIM alumnus based in Chennai, put the brakes on his corporate career, that of vice-president for a technology R&D firm. He was 35 when he picked up a shovel to become an organic farmer instead. Not a landlord who employs labour but, quite literally, a subsistence farmer….
Read More about Point of no return: How a bunch of city-dwellers got back to the basics
ALTERNATIVES
Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The third installment in a series of four….
Read More about Earthbag Diaries 3: Building our brand new home, one bag at a timeForests/Wildlife
“You can’t get this experience of listening to these birds second hand through a screen, or through an MP3 player, or YouTube.You get a simulacra.You get something similar but not in any way the same. Because it is a shallower engagement, the result of that is a shallower wish to act on behalf of it.”…
Read More about Rob Hopkins: Why our imagination needs the dawn chorus
ALTERNATIVES
Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The second installment in a series of four….
Read More about Earthbag Diaries 2: Planning, material and equipment
From Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert's 'Ashes and Snow' series
ALTERNATIVES
On the occasion of Buddha Poornima, Ecologise presents an exclusive essay co-authored by Nyla Coelho & M.G. Jackson, calling for a fundamental transformation of our perceptions of reality, and a befitting code of conduct to govern our relations with one another and with every other entity on earth; a planetary imperative in need of assertion….
Read More about Exclusive essay: Towards an Ethics of Permanence
Venetia Kotamraju
ALTERNATIVES
Requiring no special equipment and no special expertise, and very economical to boot, earthbagging is famous as an ‘idiot-proof’ technique, popular with first-and-only-time owner-builders the world over. Venetia Kotamraju, who moved from busy Bangalore to a farm on the Western Ghats, writes on her experiment with earthbagging. The first installment in a series of four….
Read More about Earthbag Diaries 1: Stomping mud in SakleshpurINDIA
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?ALTERNATIVES
From TEDxWhitechapel: “Our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible; but our minds do not know how it’s possible”. In this intelligent and inspiring talk, writer and visionary Charles Eisenstein explores how we can make the transition from the old story of separation, competition and self-interest to a new Story of the People….
Read More about Charles Eisenstein: A New Story of the People
Paresh Nath/The Khaleej Times
Culture/Cognition
Kenn Orphan writes: Earth Day has morphed into an opportunity for corporations and politicians to tout empty gestures at “saving the planet” while they mercilessly plunder it. It neutralises public outrage at the world’s dire state and spreads an all-pervasive “feel goodism” to a situation that’s truly existential, for countless other species, and our own….
Read More about Earth Day and the phantoms of a pathological culture
The Indian Quarterly
Forests/Wildlife
From The Indian Quarterly: Strange things happen in this forest. A bug sucks and then pees. Droplets of bright water shoot out of its bum and fall rain-like on the forest floor. I saw it today with my own eyes. Orange and black bug on a Heliconia leaf, shadow-spangled, tumbling in the gusting wind, peeing….
Read More about Suprabha Seshan: People of the rain
ALTERNATIVES
From Open Democracy: Open cooperativism is an effort to infuse cooperatives with the basic principles of commons based peer production. Here are six interrelated strategies for post-corporate entrepreneurial coalitions. The aim is to go beyond the classical corporate paradigm, and its extractive profit-maximizing practices, toward the establishment of open cooperatives that cultivate a commons-oriented economy….
Read More about How to form a global counter-economy
Kalpataru, the divine tree of life, depicted at the 8th century Pawon temple, Java
Indiafacts.info
ALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about What modern ecology can learn from ancient Hinduism
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
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….
Read More about Tribute: Viji, the Turtle Girl
ALTERNATIVES
Charles Eisenstein writes: We need a parallel system of technology development that can guide society as conventional systems unravel and conventional technologies fail to adequately address our problems. Imagine a worldwide archipelago of land-based institutions of learning, sanctuaries of alternative technologies of earth, mind, matter, and body that are marginal or absent within conventional universities….
Read More about Why we need ‘technologies of reunion’
Villager Agni Devi at a papaya garden that is a part of the Hesatu forest
Chhandosree
ALTERNATIVES
From VillageSquare.in: The residents of Hesatu village have successfully raised a thriving forest without any intervention from the state or civil society organisations. They have demonstrated how to create a sustainable economy from ecology by raising a forest of over 100,000 trees on what used to be 365 acres of wasteland barely six years ago….
Read More about How growing a forest transformed a Jharkhand village
