Conserve/Resist
From Yale Environment 360: Ecologist Suzanne Simard, now at the University of British Columbia, has pioneered research into how trees communicate. She has shown how trees use a network of soil fungi to convey their needs and aid neighboring plants. Now she’s warning that threats like clear-cutting and climate change could disrupt these critical networks….
Read More about Suzanne Simard on the networked beauty of forests
Sandeep Anirudhan addresses the audience at an Aikyam event
ALTERNATIVES
On the first anniversary of Bangalore’s Aikyam Community for Sustainable Living, founder Sandeep Anirudhan travels back in time to recollect the journey that led to a different approach to building sustainability awareness. ‘The biggest realisation was that there was no isolated solution for any of the problems we face, because everything is connected’, he writes….
Read More about How I became a bankrupt monk: My journey towards building an eco-conscious community
Countercurrents.org
Conserve/Resist
K.P. Sasi writes: Swaminathan along with Mylamma were the initial foundations of the historic struggle at Plachimada, Kerala. The struggle initiated by a small group of these Adivasis with Dalits and farmers forced one of the largest corporate powers in the world to back down and quit Plachimada. Swaminathan passed away on March 14, 2015….
Read More about Obituary: Veloor Swaminathan, who led a legendary fight against Coca Cola that’s finding new resonance
ALTERNATIVES
We scientists, each one of us, should ask ourselves what the agricultural establishment needs to do in order effectively to address our current agricultural crisis. Given our present mechanistic scientific paradigm, we are part of the problem, and thus cannot, be part of its solution. Our first task, therefore, is to change our outlook fundamentally….
Read More about Learning from the past: A new protocol for agricultural education and research in IndiaALTERNATIVES
TheNewsMinute reports: About a half-hour distance from the Tiruvannamalai government bus depot lies the Marudam Farm School in Kanathampoondi… It was in 2009 that the idea for the farm school was born when Govinda and his wife Leela came here for an afforestation project. It was then the couple dreamt of building a sustainable community….
Read More about Five families that gave up city life for the rural dream
Rohan Chakravarty
Conserve/Resist
Rohan Chakravarty, creator of a popular comic column, writes: We know of Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson and Dian Fossey. But do you know about these heroes? This Women’s Day (8th March), Green Humour celebrates some ‘wild’ women of India- J.Vijaya, Prerna Bindra, Aparajita Datta, Divya Mudappa, Vidya Athreya, Kiran Pathija, Nandini Velho and Tiasa Adhya (click…
Read More about Spotlight: Some ‘wild’ women of IndiaALTERNATIVES
The pioneering American economist who helped found the discipline of Ecological Economics, and presently a leading theorist of ‘steady-state economics’, muses on Pope Francis’ ground-breaking encyclical on environment and justice. “At a minimum, he’s given us a more truthful, informed, and courageous analysis of the environmental and moral crisis than have our secular political leaders.”…
Read More about Herman Daly: Thoughts on Pope Francis’ Laudato SiALTERNATIVES
The Transition movement refers to grassroot community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of energy depletion, climate destruction, and economic instability. The UK-based Transition Network, founded in 2006, inspired the creation of many of the projects. Here, Rob Hopkins, one of its founders, looks back to when it all began….
Read More about 10 years of Transition Network: A look back at the early daysALTERNATIVES
Intercontinentalcry.org reports: On January 11, 2017 Ecuador’s Esmeraldas Provincial Court handed down its decision on the world’s first constitutionally-based Rights of Nature lawsuit. Amazingly, this historic demand for justice—which simultaneously begs for a shift in merely human rights-based paradigms—was made by people who literally and figuratively live in Ecuador’s margins: The Canton of San Lorenzo….
Read More about Court issues ruling in world’s first “Rights of Nature” lawsuitConflict/Dispossession
This day a year ago, Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home. She and her associates had faced death threats for standing up to mining and dam projects that threatened to destroy their community. A tribute to her fighting spirit on her first death anniversary….
Read More about Tribute: Berta Cáceres, an outspoken voice for nature that was silenced
Conflict/Dispossession
We are coming into an era of huge uncertainty–climate change is a reality, resources are becoming more scarce and I this will eventually lead to armed conflict. While my partner and I are in the extremely fortunate position, I feel that it would be unfair of me to bring a child into a precarious future….
Read More about I want children – but my fears for the planet’s future fill me with doubt
The team from Safe Harvest interacts with Farmers in Niwali (Sendhwa)
YourStory
ALTERNATIVES
Safe Harvest is a conglomeration of eight civil society organisations that have been working towards and promoting non-pesticide management (NPM) practices among some of India’s poorest and most disenfranchised communities. Today, they work with a farmer base of close to 50,000 across 11 states, many of whom have seen a 20% rise in their income….
Read More about This company is helping 50,000 farmers across 11 states grow and sell pesticide-free food
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Wildlife biologist Nisarg Prakash writes: After a flare-up in my depression and increasingly erratic behaviour, I was shunted out from a landscape that I once knew like the back of my hand. It was here that I’d retreated to the land, to the hills, valleys and streams as a poultice for the cuts and bruises….
Read More about The mind’s river: How a life along the Cauvery stilled my anxieties
ALTERNATIVES
The worldview that informs contemporary global culture was conceived during the European ‘Enlightenment’ of the 17th century. Its shortcomings have become increasingly evident today, and they are beginning to be seen as the root cause of the many seemingly intractable global problems that confront us today. This essay presents an overview of an alternative worldview….
Read More about M.G. Jackson: A new worldview for our timesALTERNATIVES
Ariana López Peña writes: Costa Rica was the most environmentally advanced and happiest place on earth last year, followed by Mexico, Colombia and Vanuatu, according to the Happy Planet Index, which measures life expectancy, well-being, environmental footprint and inequality to calculate nations’ success– all areas where Costa Rica’s government has made significant effort and investment….
Read More about Is Costa Rica the world’s happiest, greenest country?
People’s Climate, 2014
CLIMATE CRISIS
The planet is getting hotter, leaving people hungry and fuelling wars around the world and you want to do something about it. But with a green movement to cater for every age, location, and type of plastic recycling, how to turn your enthusiasm into action? Maeve Shearlaw’s tips for getting started as a climate activist….
Read More about So you want to be a climate campaigner? Here’s how
ALTERNATIVES
Enlightenment thinking is coming to an end… But our civilization still operates as if reality is about organising inert, dead matter in efficient ways. It is impossible to achieve sustainability with our prevailing ‘operating system’ for economics, politics, and culture if the underlying ‘bios’—our unconscious assumption about reality—remains tied to an ideology of dead matter….
Read More about The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the AnthropoceneConserve/Resist
Catch News reports: Siddharth Chakravarty worked for a decade in the merchant navy. It was a lucrative job, but one day, he realised it was not for him. He walked out of the merchant navy in 2011. The reason? Because the merchant navy’s goal was to maximise profits, and let the marine ecosytem be damned….
Read More about Humans are killing the marine ecosystem. But this man is trying to reverse thatConserve/Resist
Ritwick Dutta, noted environment lawyer and founder of the highly accomplished Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), received the Bhagirath Prayas Samman, an award that recognises efforts towards protection and conservation of rivers. Manu Moudgil caught up with him on his journey so far and how we can further expand the constituency of environment….
Read More about Ritwick Dutta: ‘We need to have a selfish interest in environment’ALTERNATIVES
Daripalli Ramaiah, recently awarded the Padmashri, India’s third highest civilian honour, has dedicated his life to increasing the country’s green cover and in the process has been credited with planting one crore saplings. The fight of Ramaiah to plant trees was not alone, as his wife Janamma has also made significant contribution to tree planting….
Read More about Daripalli Ramaiah: The man who planted (ten million!) trees
