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National Green Tribunal

Conserve/Resist

Read: A PIL to protect India’s vital, life-supporting natural resources

9th December 2018

The full text of a Public Interest Litigation initiated before the Supreme Court of India, by Akhilesh Chipli and Shankar Sharma, requesting the court to draw firm legal limits on India’s suicidally destructive economic growth during the last three decades, which has led to rapidly deteriorating ecological conditions (air, water, soil, climate) in the country….

Education/Awareness

The National Green Tribunal is not so green anymore

10th September 2018

Rajeev Suri writes: In keeping with his belief that most cases are being filed by blackmailers, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, the new Chairperson of the National Green Tribunal, has been following the three D rule; Dismiss, Dispose, Disburse. The Chairperson is also known for his previous association with the ruling party and strong RSS leanings….

Development/Growth

A zero sum game: The rail projects that spell doom for the Cauvery

21st February 2018

The fracas over water sharing has obscured the fact that the Cauvery itself is facing a major threat: two railway lines to be constructed through Kodagu, the forested hill district where the river originates. A river’s fate – and those of the millions that depend on it – now hangs in balance, writes Chirag Chinnappa….

Conserve/Resist

Obituary: Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, intrepid defender of Kolkata’s wetlands

17th February 2018

Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, one of India’s most courageous and persevering environmentalists, is no more. Here’s a tribute to Ghosh, best known for his campaign to save East Kolkata’s wetlands and its fisher and farming communities from the city’s real estate mafia. Also included, a video where he explains the concepts of cognitive apartheid and positive footprint….

Conflict/Dispossession

The Indian Oil project that could turn a Kerala village into a deathtrap

21st December 2017

From The Wire: An Indian Oil Terminal, which can store up to 15,400 metric tons of cooking gas, is scheduled to be built in Vypeen, Kochi, which is among the world’s most densely populated islands. Will Kerala’s Communist Patrty-led government allow this high risk project to come up, defying all common sense and public opinion?…

ALTERNATIVES

‘Nature gives us hope’: A tribute to Latha Anantha, river guardian

18th November 2017

Dr Latha Anantha, an expert on rivers and one of the first names to crop up in the struggle to protect them, is no more. The founder and moving spirit behind the River Research Centre, Kerala, she was best known for her efforts to save the Chalakudy river. She’d been diagnosed with cancer in 2014….

The Aghanashini river

Manjunath Bhat/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Conflict/Dispossession

A rare, pristine estuary comes under threat in Karnataka

9th May 2017

TheWire.in reports: The Aghanashini is one of the last free flowing rivers in Karnataka: it has no major industrial establishments, dams or townships on its banks. It is in this rich and highly productive estuary that the state government plans to build a multi-purpose estuarine port, which’s now one last step away from final clearance….

Forests/Wildlife

Spotlight: Who is running our pollution control boards?

7th October 2016

Ritwick Dutta writes: The National Green Tribunal recently passed a landmark judgment ruling that only those persons who have ‘special knowledge’ and ‘practical experience’ in ‘matters relating to environmental protection’ are eligible for appointment to pollution control boards. Unfortunately, across various states, persons who do not fulfill the criterion have been appointed in these posts….

Conflict/Dispossession

Soon, we may not have a Cauvery river to fight over

25th September 2016

Nityanand Jayaraman writes: The complexity of river systems, the hydrological dynamics that determine their ebb and flow, and anthropogenic confounders such as land-use change and climate change had no influence on the tribunal order… Today’s planners try to spare water for ecological flows, not realising that ecological flows are what keep the river a river….

Health/Safety

Landmark NGT judgments hold private firms, not god or government, responsible

17th September 2016

Nehmat Kaur writes: The National Green Tribunal covered new ground for the ‘polluter pays’ principle by invoking it in two landmark judgments recently. Activists are hopeful that this will help deter corporations from functioning with impunity, under the cover of governmental apathy. The judgments in both cases acknowledged governmental inaction in dealing with environmental damage….

A view of the Vizhinjam fishing harbour

Aneesh/Wikimapia

Conflict/Dispossession

Adani’s Vizhinjam port: Another development disaster in the making?

6th September 2016

The National Green Tribunal has virtually given the go-ahead for the proposed mega port at Vizhinjam, to be built and run by the Adani group, setting aside appeals by local fisher folk and environmentalists. Here’s a closer look at what’s at stake at Vizhinjam, and why many consider it another developmental disaster in the making….

Development/Growth

Environment Ministry’s rules for polluters in India, copied word for word from the US

8th July 2016

Jay Mazoomdar reports: Three-quarters of the Environment Ministry’s Environment Supplement Plan — 2,900 words of the 3,850-word draft — is directly lifted from a similar US government document. The draft notification proposes to allow those who go ahead with project work without prior environmental clearance. Under existing laws, these are criminal offences punishable with imprisonment….

A view of the Athirapilly falls

Countercurrents.org

Conflict/Dispossession

Athirappilly: Kerala’s destructive dam project that refuses to die

1st July 2016

Neha Miriam Kurian writes: The Left-Front government in Kerala is reviving the Athirappilly Hydro Electric Project against stiff resistance from local tribes and environmentalists. If implemented, it will displace the ancient hunter-gatherer Kadar tribe and submerge the only remaining low elevation riparian forests left in the Western Ghats, one of the world’s eight biodiversity ‘hotspots’….

A view of the Vizhinjam fishing harbour

Aneesh/Wikimapia

Conflict/Dispossession

How ‘development’ is set to create 2000 jobs, but destroy 50,000 livelihoods in Kerala

23rd June 2016

Job creation for Keralites from the controversial Adani-run Vizhinjam Port project is estimated at around 2,000. Compare that to 50,000 fisherfolk who’ll lose their livelihoods. Anjana Radhakrishnan takes a closer look at a project that already seems a social, ecological and economic disaster in the making, but has so far escaped the national media’s attention….

Construction on the Yamuna floodplains by Art of Living Foundation

Conserve/Resist

Spotlight: New legislation threatens India’s already endangered wetlands

9th June 2016

This March, the central government set the ball rolling on a new set of rules intended, supposedly, to protect India’s wetlands. In this special feature, we present articles that look at the state of wetlands, and critically examine the new legislation, which many fear is a case of the cure being worse than the disease….

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi government has launched a silent war on the environment

12th May 2016

Nayantara Narayanan reports: The UPA government left behind a legacy of weakened safeguards for India’s environment, forests and forest-dwelling people. The Narendra Modi government has lost no time in weakening them further. The process has been so accelerated that journalists have struggled to keep pace with them. Here is a look at seven reported changes….

Development/Growth

How did Indian rivers fare in 2015?

19th March 2016

Swati Bansal writes: The waters of many rivers were declared as unfit for human consumption. This included rivers in Goa with fecal coliform bacteria, and rivers in Karnataka where none were suitable for drinking. But pollution was just one factor, the other was hydropower power projects which continue to choke rivers such as the Chenab….

The Hindu

GREEN POLITICS

Yogendra Yadav and Vandana Shiva call for a green party in India

29th December 2015

Vasanth Srinivasan of The Hindu quotes former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav as saying, “there is a crying need for environmental politics” in India, but with the following caveat. “If green politics does not restrict itself as urban environmental activism but emerges as a binding agent of various marginalised groups and concerns, it definitely has a future in India.”…

CLIMATE CRISIS

In the news: Modi govt and the state of the environment

9th August 2015

Outlook Magazine Mangroves in peril Navi Mumbai airport site How The NDA Is Whittling Down Green Norms Change in definition of no-go area in dense forest, leaving more area open for project Keeping powers with the Centre to even allow projects in ‘no-go areas’ of dense forests Proposal to allow firms to take over afforestation,…

Conflict/Dispossession

Narendra Modi’s war on the environment

15th April 2015

Rohini Mohan reports: In under a year, the Modi government has begun to undo policies of fair land acquisition, undermine environmental protection and reverse the fight for tribal rights. The finance, environment and rural-development ministers, and Modi himself, have called these safeguards to protect people’s property, the environment and tribal rights “roadblocks” to economic growth….