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planning & policy

A record number of guns and animal skins were seized during a recent raid at the Meerut house of a retired Colonel

The Times of India

Conserve/Resist

The illegal and ignominious world of wildlife trafficking

3rd May 2017

A recent raid at the Meerut house of a retired Colonel and his national-level shooter son unearthed a shockingly large cache of animal skins, parts and meat, apart from over 100 illegally imported firearms. This feature by Down to Earth analyses the magnitude and international nature of the flourishing illegal trade of Indian wildlife species….

Brayan Caicedo

ALTERNATIVES

Sunita Narain: The future is in our hands

We must rethink the question of states, market and society. We have dismembered the state; grown the market and believed that we’ve empowered society. Slowly, the circle closed— state, market and aspiring, consuming society merged. They became one. Anyone outside this circle stopped getting counted. This cannot work. This is our future’s most important agenda….

Scroll.in

CLIMATE CRISIS

This is how alarming Tamil Nadu’s water crisis is

1st May 2017

Shoaib Daniyal reports: The theatrics of the recent protest by Tamil Nadu farmers in Delhi might seem odd, but it was driven by a disastrous situation in the state. This country-wide map of water reservoir levels shows just how bad things are: the state has 81% less water in its reservoirs than its 10-year average….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Regardless of lifestyles we’re too numerous to be sustainable

Lionel Anet writes on Countercurrents.org: The ultimate way to reduce our footprint on the planet is to reduce our population, a near impossible task in any civilisations but particularly capitalist ones. That’s the reason it’s shelved before it’s planned, except for the cruel Chinese example. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to survive….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Heat waves are getting worse, but these simple measures can save many lives

30th April 2017

Gulrez Shah Azhar writes: This summer’s shaping up to be especially bad in India. Satellite images show large areas dried up from lack of water. Without access to water, heat waves become particularly deadly. But heat deaths are preventable and simple measures could save lives. Here are three actions that would make an enormous difference….

Bookshelf

Nicholas Stern: Why are we waiting?

In his new book, Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change, Nicholas Stern explains why, notwithstanding the great attractions of a new path, it’s been so difficult to tackle climate change. He makes a compelling case for climate action now and sets out the forms that action should take….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Watch: The top 10 countries in danger from future sea level rise

26th April 2017

From The Daily Conversation: This video shows the top 10 countries threatened by the 6 meter sea level rise we are almost guaranteed to see in the not-too-distant future, according to the projected pace of global warming and ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica. India is No. 3 on the list, and China No. 1….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why climate change is a ‘white swan’

23rd April 2017

Rupert Read writes: In financial parlance, a ‘black swan’ is a radically unexpected event. Ever-worsening man-made climate change (that is, barring a system change) is not a potential ‘black swan’ event. It’s a white swan, an expected event. It is, quite simply, completely what anyone with a basic understanding of the situation should now expect….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Study: A minor change in your diet can reduce water use for agriculture

22nd April 2017

A new modeling study published in The Lancet suggests that India’s agricultural need for water can be met if Indians introduce minor diet changes. Research team leader Alan Dangour tells Down to Earth that “dietary change is a potential way to improve resilience of the Indian food system in the face of future groundwater decline.”…

Bookshelf

How vulture capitalism is swallowing the world

“What you see in a lot of countries is a predatory capitalism, from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Australia, which show the corporations that are involved in the neo-liberal agenda, an agenda that has been implemented without really any public consent. This is happening, I would argue, almost by stealth,” says author and journalist Anthony Lowenstein….

A Jarawa tribal receiving handout from tourist - a scene from the Andaman Trunk Road

Scmp.com

Bookshelf

How a statist vision of development has brought Andaman’s tribals close to extinction

21st April 2017

Excerpt from Islands in Flux, by Pankaj Sekhsaria: These communities of thousands of individuals with a living lineage going back thousands of years have been brought to this sorry state in a mere 150 years. It began with the British and their policies, which have been kept up with clinical efficiency by modern, independent India….

www.degrowth.de

ALTERNATIVES

Forget ‘developing’ poor countries, it’s time to ‘de-develop’ rich countries

Jason Hickel writes: Growth isn’t an option any more–we’ve already grown too much. Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck speed. The hard truth is that this global crisis is due almost entirely to overconsumption in rich countries. Rich countries must “catch down” to more appropriate levels of development….

Gopal Aggarwal/Wikimedia Commons

Development/Growth

Innovation is overrated; it’s maintenance that matters more

19th April 2017

Andrew Russell writes: The most undervalued forms of technological labour are also the most ordinary: those who repair and maintain technologies that already exist. This shift in emphasis involves focusing on the constant processes of entropy and un-doing– and the work we do to slow or halt them, rather than on introduction of novel things….

Gujarat-based Amul kick-started the milk revolution in India

Consumerism/Lifestyle

How Indians started drinking milk (and what it has cost us)

17th April 2017

Many people think that milk is normal good food. But a large part of the world until recently never consumed the milk of other animals. Even today, Eastern Asia as a rule does not use milk. So, for some, milk is the greatest food, while for others, milk is one of the five white poisons….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Early heat wave baking India is a sign of worse to come

16th April 2017

Climate Central reports: The early heat this year is due to a shift in wind patterns that has seen air flowing in from the south and west, across dry areas that quickly cause that air to warm. That heat-waves will become more common and intense is one of the clearest outcomes of human-driven global warming….

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….

Conflict/Dispossession

Are farmers ‘collateral damage’ of India’s economic growth?

14th April 2017

People living in villages, who are migrating in large numbers to cities, could be victims of our economic development or perhaps the dismal income growth of farm households is semi-deliberate to keep labour costs low… Are our rural brothers victims or collateral damage of economic development, of a deliberate though unstated strategy, asks Sanjiv Phansalkar….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Rupert Read: Why I had to tell my students that I fear for them

12th April 2017

Rupert Read, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia, UK, recently shocked his new 1st year students with a ‘welcoming address’ that dealt with the looming dangers of climate change. Watch the video or read the transcript of his speech below to know why Prof. Read chose to dwell on this unexpected subject….

P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India

Education/Awareness

The precarious situation of India’s water problem

11th April 2017

Hari Pulakkat writes: The country’s water data has been largely hidden from public view, and what was available was poor or untrustworthy. This brings up a question rarely asked by policymakers. If scientists find it difficult to analyse the country’s water resources at the moment, how valid are the reports that forecast India’s water future?…

Rohan Chakravarty

INDIA

What does it mean for a river to have rights?

10th April 2017

From The Hindu: The rights do not stem from an intrinsic identity or status of the river, but more from their use for humans; and giving them ‘personhood’ or legal status makes it very human-centred. Can rivers not be recognised as having identity, worth, dignity, and rights as intrinsic qualities, not because they serve us?…