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ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, by Jairam Ramesh

3rd August 2017

Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh tells IndiaSpend about his latest book ‘Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature’, why you can’t leave the environment to market forces, the current government’s policies, the erosion of the National Green Tribunal’s autonomy, the recent commercial approval for GM mustard and the poor implementation of environmental laws in the country….

Conserve/Resist

A birder gives wings to three centuries of South Asian ornithology

31st July 2017

From The Hindu: Aasheesh Pittie has single-handedly indexed a monumental bibliographic database of everything that has been published on the birds of South Asia in the printed or electronic form since the mid-eighteenth century, searchable with keywords. This little-known labour of love by Pittie, founding editor of the bi-monthly Indian BIRDS, is available at www.southasiaornith.in….

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….

ALTERNATIVES

David Bamberger: Love of the land

16th July 2017

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…

Bratto Amin

CLIMATE CRISIS

A Bangladeshi professor is risking his life to defend the Sundarbans

6th July 2017

From Scroll.in: 60-year-old Anu Muhammad, the author of 30 books, has been getting repeated death threats for his role leading a seven-year campaign against plans to build a $1.5 billion coal-fired power plant in Rampal, southern Bangladesh, on a site teeming with waterways, mud flats and a host of threatened species from crocodiles to pythons….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

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

28th June 2017

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….

Conflict/Dispossession

P. Sainath: Why are our farmers angry?

17th June 2017

From People’s Archive of Rural India: From farmers being shot dead in Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, to those across Maharashtra out on the streets, to those from Tamil Nadu on hunger strike in New Delhi not so long ago, this has been a season of agrarian discontent. Why is this happening, which way will it go?…

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.”…

Forests/Wildlife

In memory of Prashanth Ettaboina: A passionate life cut short

5th June 2017

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….

Atulya Bingham at the mud home she built in Turkey

ALTERNATIVES

A relation of love with the land

30th May 2017

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….

U. Subbaraju with his students from Timbaktu Collective

P.V. Sivakumar/The Hindu

ALTERNATIVES

Obituary: U. Subbaraju – A life lived from first principles

29th May 2017

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….

Siddharth at his thatched-roof home at Netrampakkam

Shriya Mohan

ALTERNATIVES

Point of no return: How a bunch of city-dwellers got back to the basics

22nd May 2017

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….

Conflict/Dispossession

A season of regret for an aging tribal expert

12th May 2017

From The New York Times: At 82, the anthropologist T. N. Pandit passes his days in the gentle occupations of old age: poetry, a Buddhist study circle, a daily walk in the park. It is rare for anyone to ask him about the years he spent with the hunter gatherer tribes of the Andaman Islands….

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’….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Debal Deb: ‘We have more hardy, nutritious grains than GM can offer’

26th April 2017

From India Water Portal: Records show there were 1.10 lakh varieties of rice in India in 1965. After the Green Revolution, which pushed for hybrid varieties, less than 7,000 remain. Debal Deb, who has conserved 1,200 climate-resilient rice varieties, speaks on the need to conserve traditional seeds and why we don’t need genetically modified ones….

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….

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….

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….