Partially burned and standing trees called snags loom over a site where researchers from the John T Harrington Forestry Research Center are conducting reforestation experiments at Deer Lake Mesa in Cimarron, New Mexico on August 17, 2021.
[File: Reuters/Adria Malcolm]
CLIMATE CRISIS
Apocalypse investors are pushing fake climate solutions on us that are making climate change worse.
Read More about We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction
ALTERNATIVES
Ratheesh Pisharody writes: A classic method of avoiding personal sacrifice is to explore “alternatives”. The individual thought behind this is simple. “Can I keep sitting on my privileges by pretending to make a dramatic change with sufficient optics and industry backing, but with no personal cost/effort?”. And the pop-icon of “alternatives” is the electric car….
Read More about The electric car must fail
Conserve/Resist
Mumbai has four rivers: Mithi, Oshiwara, Poisar and Dahisar, which are (together) 40.7km long. And yet, for most part, they remain invisible to the city’s population. Today, haphazard development policies along with encroachments, have led to the rapid deterioration of these rivers, which have been practically reduced to drains. A photo essay by Pooja Jain….
Read More about Photo essay: Rivers of the Island City
ALTERNATIVES
Aseem Shrivastava writes: Ghosh insisted that human culture does not consist just of literature, cinema, music and dance. Rather, the patrimony of ecological culture, which is not just an artefact of the past, resides in the practical collective memory of communities, showing pathways of “living creatively with nature”. Such rooted wisdom lights up paths to…
Read More about Dhrubajyoti Ghosh: The intrepid ecologist and his ‘laboratory of survival’
Volunteers taking readings to map the shoreline
ALTERNATIVES
From ICSF: In the face of climate change and disastrous development projects like Sagarmala, stewardship of coastal land is the primary challenge for coastal communities. Sea level rise and increasing climate unpredictability require local communities to play an active role in creating knowledge-bases for appropriate action, to reduce disaster risk and recreate a healthy coastline….
Read More about A tide turns: Coastal community resilience in the age of climate change
Conserve/Resist
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….
Read More about Obituary: Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, intrepid defender of Kolkata’s wetlands
Indian Express
Conflict/Dispossession
Jindal, Adani, Vedanta are the Big Three who are transporting most of the millions of tonnes of coal unloaded at Goa’s Mormugao Port every year. In a painstaking investigation carried out over four months, Smitha Nair of The Indian Express tracked three key coal routes to find a trail of health hazards and environmental damage….
Read More about How coal is choking Goa: An investigation by The Indian Express
Sarus Cranes in Etah, Uttar Pradesh
Gopi Sundar
Culture/Cognition
David Abram writes: I am dazzled, yes, by the creativity of the human mind, but I’m also struck dumb by the ability of various aspen groves to maintain and replenish themselves, through their common root system, for eighty thousand years and more. Are we humans unique? Sure we are. But then, so is everyone else around here….
Read More about Being human, in a more-than-human world
ALTERNATIVES
We consume more, we fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We have more stuff, our lives are more convenient, yet we’re not happier. Prof. Jules Pretty sets out a plan to engage people with Nature and create more sustainable and enjoyable living for everyone. The first call to action is: “Every child outdoors every day”….
Read More about A manifesto for the green mind
Representative pic
ENERGY
From Sanhati: A history of the 240 year-old Raniganj Coalfield– the story of its workers –the many lives that have been spent in its shadows, displaced by coal and depending on it for survival –would be a tale every bit as expansive as the Mahabharata. This two-part article gives a short glimpse of this history….
Read More about A window into coal workers in India: The history of Raniganj Coalfield
ALTERNATIVES
Rob Hopkins writes: The Wild Network’s mission is “to support children, parents and guardians to roam free, play wild and connect with nature”. According to their ‘Chief Wild Officer’ Mark Sears, mental well-being is proven to be clearly linked to time spent outdoors in natural environments, but this is neglected by modern schooling and parenting….
Read More about On rewilding the imaginationALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about Bookshelf: Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, by Jairam Ramesh
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Mining Review Africa: Environmental NGO Urgewald has revealed companies that are at the forefront to expand the world’s coal-fired power by 42.8%. The report identifies the 120 companies that are planning about 850 new coal plants in 62 countries–including Indian coal majors Adani, Tata, Lanco and Coal India, which are driving the biggest plants….
Read More about The Dirty 120: Urgewald exposes world’s biggest coal plant developers
Untreated effluents dumped into Sabarmati downstream of Vasna barrage, which is the dead-end of Sabarmati Riverfont
Amruta Pradhan/SANDRP
Conflict/Dispossession
From Counterview.org: The Sabarmati River Front has been in the news lately as a model of “river beautification”. When in reality, it is a dead river, filled with effluents and sewage. It was “rejuvenated” with Narmada water, which came at a great cost of the displacement of lakhs of people and destruction of the environment….
Read More about Sabarmati riverfront, inland waterways, Mahanadi dispute, are all newer forms of onslaught on rivers
The NGT imposed a Rs 5 crore fine on the Art of Living Foundation for damaging the Yamuna floodplains
Education/Awareness
News Click reports: The Ministry of Environment plans to amend the National Green Tribunal Act, which was passed during the UPA regime as part of India’s commitment under the Rio Declaration. The move will result in a dilution of the powers of the body, widely regarded as the most effective environmental court in the world….
Read More about Independence of the National Green Tribunal under threat
Coral reef in Papua New Guinea's Kimbe Bay. Almost all coral reefs may experience bleaching by 2050
David Doubilet/National Geographic
Conserve/Resist
From National Geographic: Our waters have borne the brunt of global-warming for decades, but dying corals, extreme weather, and plummeting fish stocks are signs that it can handle no more. And people are already experiencing direct consequences, such as more extreme weather events, says a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature….
Read More about The oceans can’t protect us anymore—here’s whyConflict/Dispossession
From Truthout.org: This superbly researched 2015 paper explains why China’s unfolding environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than “normal” capitalism almost everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. It should serve as a warning for India, whose official policies increasingly mimic the ‘China model’….
Read More about Spotlight: China’s communist-capitalist ecological apocalypse
ALTERNATIVES
Prem Shankar Jha in The Wire: When nearly 350 million vehicles have to be charged every day, not only will an entire nation-wide, and therefore expensive, recharging infrastructure have to be built, but the power these vehicles will consume will have to be generated first. Nearly all of this will have to come from coal….
Read More about India has a better option than electric cars
Larry C Price/The Guardian
Conflict/Dispossession
From The Guardian: Zambia’s Kabwe is the world’s most toxic town, according to pollution experts, where mass lead poisoning has almost certainly damaged the brains and other organs of generations of children –who continue to be poisoned every day. The lead levels in Kabwe are as much as 100 times that of recommended safety levels….
Read More about The world’s most toxic town: the terrible legacy of Zambia’s lead mines
(From left) Johnson Jament, Lisba Yesudas and Robert Panipilla
CLIMATE CRISIS
Friends of Marine Life (FML), is a Kerala-based organisation that specialises in seabed ecosystem studies and also helps promote sustainable fishing. Three of it’s members, who hail from the state’s indigenous fishing community, the Mukkuva, were recently invited the first UN conference on the world’s oceans. The text of speeches they delivered at the conference….
Read More about Speech by representatives of indigenous fisher folk at the first UN conference on oceans
