Rohan Chakravarty
INDIA
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?…
Read More about What does it mean for a river to have rights?
Illustration by Jasper Rietman
Bookshelf
Florence Williams writes: Unfortunately for city dwellers, the closer we live to roads, the higher our risk of autism, stroke and cognitive decline in ageing, although the exact reasons haven’t been teased out. Scientists suspect it has something to do with fine particles causing tissue inflammation and altering gene expression in the brain’s immune cells….
Read More about Warning: living in a city could seriously damage your health
Representative pic
Conserve/Resist
Live Mint reports: The Uttarakhand high court has recognized the Ganga and the Yamuna as so-called living entities, giving the rivers that have seen years of damage, a legal voice. Animals, for instance, aren’t considered living entities by law. It’s the first time a court has recognized a non-human as a living entity in India….
Read More about A first: Indian court declares Ganga, Yamuna as living legal entitiesDigests/Specials
This day six years ago, tsunami waves crashed into Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, leading to a meltdown, which by one estimate continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific daily. A selection of reports and a lead article by M.V. Ramana, on what some have called history’s worst environmental disaster….
Read More about Six years later: A closer look at Fukushima
Health/Safety
There were 1.1 million premature deaths in India due to long-term exposure to pollutants. While China registered slightly higher figures, it has now acted against this hazard—the situation in India, in contrast, is getting worse. The highest number of premature deaths globally due to ozone is also in India. Might all this qualify as genocide?…
Read More about Darryl D’Monte: Does India’s refusal to tackle air pollution amount to genocide?
The venue of the 2015 Art of Living event on the Yamuna floodplains
INDIA
The Third Pole reports: Over 140 million people are eligible to vote as Uttar Pradesh —the land of the Ganga and the Yamuna— goes to polls. Everybody agrees that the poison affects drinking water and irrigation. Still, the apathy is mirrored in town after town in eastern UP. Candidates rarely address it in their campaigns….
Read More about ‘Ganga, Yamuna are drains, no party cares’Culture/Cognition
Debutant director Aparnaa Singh’s Irada is said to have been inspired by real events –the pollution of groundwater by a chemical manufacturer with the blessings of a state’s ruling party. Set in Punjab, Irada advocates solutions that viewers will be hard-pressed to replicate, but its concerns are timely, character sketches memorable, and its empathy unmistakable….
Read More about Irada: a well-intended expose of pollution and graft from Bollywood
Conserve/Resist
Alexei Yablokov, the towering grandfather of Russian ecology who worked to unmask Cold War nuclear dumping practices in the Arctic region, died in Moscow last week. Yablokov commanded a broad environmental and political mandate in Russia, founded Russia’s branch of Greenpeace and was the leader of the Green Russia faction of the Yabloko opposition party….
Read More about Tribute: Alexei Yablokov, grandfather of Russian environmentalism
Health/Safety
Gary Haq writes: The health impacts of air pollution are well documented; but now, new evidence suggests a link between air pollution and dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, with exposure to poor air quality equivalent to passively smoking six cigarettes a day. Toxic air has been blamed for more road traffic crashes from pollutants distracting drivers….
Read More about Take a deep breath – here’s what 2016 revealed about the deadly dangers of air pollution
Representative pic
Development/Growth
Catch News reports: Chhattisgarh’s Janjgir-Champa region, once famous for paddy cultivation, is now emerging as the state’s power hub with several power plants coming up in the area during the recent years. While fuelling the state’s economic growth, dust and ash emitted from these power plants are turning thousands of local people blind from cataract….
Read More about Power plants are making thousands go blind in ChhattisgarhALTERNATIVES
There’s no such thing as ‘healthy food’ if it’s not produced by sustainable farming systems on living soils, Patrick Holden told the recent ‘Food: The Forgotten Medicine’ conference. But after 70 years of industrial farming, there’s a huge job to be done to restore depleted soils and the impoverished genetic diversity of seeds and crops….
Read More about Watch: “Good nutrition begins in healthy soils”Conflict/Dispossession
Amita Bhaduri writes: Nuclear plants require enormous amounts of water for cooling and other purposes. The Fatehabad plant will be the first project in the world to be located away from water sources. “The water will not be enough even for normal operations; what if an accident takes place?”, asks Dhanraj Jat, a local farmer….
Read More about Fatehabad nuclear plant: A Fukushima in the making?Digests/Specials
Whitney Webb reports: Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific every day. It will continue do so indefinitely as the leak’s source is inaccessible to both humans and robots due to extremely high temperatures. In other words, Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean in just five years….
Read More about Was Fukushima the worst environmental disaster in human history?
Health/Safety
The Hindu reports: Air pollution could have killed at least 600,000 Indians in 2012, worldwide because they were exposed to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that may have aggravated or been directly responsible for cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer according to the WHO. India comes just behind China–which witnessed an estimated 800,000 deaths, says the study….
Read More about Air pollution could have killed 600,000 Indians in 2012, says WHO studyHealth/Safety
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….
Read More about Landmark NGT judgments hold private firms, not god or government, responsible
Health/Safety
According to new data from the World Health Organization, India now ranks in the top ten of the top 50 most polluted countries on earth, although it does rank better than many of its closest neighbors. Meanwhile, data from NASA show parts of the Indo-Gangetic plain to be some of the planet’s most polluted places….
Read More about India now among the world’s top ten most polluted countriesConserve/Resist
Europe recently took an extraordinary vote, refusing to grant Monsanto a license for its main product and cornerstone of its empire – the cancer-linked weed killer glyphosate. A key role was played by a massive campaign initiated by activist organization Avaaz, with 2 million signing their petition to the EU. Here’s how they did it….
Read More about How a mass campaign helped vote out glyphosate in EU
Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans
Daesung Lee
CLIMATE CRISIS
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy writes: Droughts, floods, heat & cold waves will keep threatening India. We can’t expect the Paris agreement to solve the crisis associated with these extreme weather events. The way to minimize their impact is through adaptive measures by understanding the mechanism in which they occur, by quantifying the agro-climate of a region….
Read More about Precautionary measures for natural calamities: A letter to the Prime Minister
ALTERNATIVES
Shonali Muthalaly writes: After all, ‘natural’ is an easy term to manipulate — bio-fertilisers and bio pesticides are technically natural too. When the farmer controls the entire process, using dung from village cattle, neem cakes and local earthworms, it’s a simpler, cleaner, and more straightforward process. It also means that the farmer has full control….
Read More about Does buying organic food also mean you are eating responsibly?
CLIMATE CRISIS
India has an extreme air pollution problem, which kills up to 400,000 people every year. This pollution, made up of fine particles called aerosols, also has the effect of cooling the local climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight before it reaches the ground. It is feasible that India’s pollution problem has been “hiding” extreme heat spikes….
Read More about The hidden connection between air pollution and heat spikes: India’s lethal double bind
