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ALTERNATIVES

The bright spots: Global examples of a thriving social-ecological future

16th November 2016

There is indeed no lack of stories that document climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality and other examples of unsustainable development around the world. Efforts to envision what better futures could actually look like seldom receive the same attention. But now researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre have gathered hundreds of examples of such positive initiatives….

ALTERNATIVES

Pablo Tittonell: Feeding the world with Agroecology

14th November 2016

Pablo Tittonell is professor ‘Farming Systems Ecology’ at Wageningen University and one of the worlds most well known experts in the field of agriculture and ecology. In this TED Talk, he advocates intensification of agriculture by making optimal use of natural processes and the landscape to meet the worlds constantly growing demand for food.

ALTERNATIVES

Cuba’s sustainable agriculture is now at risk, thanks to Uncle Sam

9th November 2016

Miguel Altieri writes: Cuba, which took to agroecology out of necessity when the U.S.S.R. collapsed, has become a leading example of ecological agriculture. If it does not deal carefully with U.S. agribusinesses, Cuba could revert to an industrial approach that relies on mechanization, transgenic crops and agrochemicals, rolling back the revolutionary gains of its campesinos….

Economy

David Korten: From serving money to serving life: A sacred story for our time

8th November 2016

When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong. Much like the Trans-Pacific Partnership “trade deal”, everything we’re told about capitalism and our economy is a pack of lies. Time for a new story, says preeminent scholar and critic of corporate globalization, David Korten, the best-selling author of ‘When Corporations Rule the World’….

Education/Awareness

Watch: How the return of wolves rejuvenated an entire ecosystem

6th November 2016

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable occurrence of a “trophic cascade” – a single change in a food chain that transforms an entire ecosystem. How exactly did the wolves change the river? Author and environmentalist George Monbiot explains in this video….

ALTERNATIVES

Watch: “Good nutrition begins in healthy soils”

31st October 2016

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….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Watch: 7 key scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate film Before the Flood

25th October 2016

Leo Hickman writes: Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio has spent the past three years asking a wide variety of people around the world about climate change. His collection of interviews in the film–ranging from Barack Obama and the Pope through to Elon Musk and Sunita Narain– cover the science, impacts, vested interests, politics and possible solutions….

Conflict/Dispossession

Watch: Pentagon video warns of “unavoidable” dystopian future

16th October 2016

The Intercept reports: This startling five minute video from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University depicts an “unavoidable” future of brutal and anarchic supercities and offers an apocalyptic list of ills endemic to this new urban environment. In addition, “Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor,” the narrator warns at one point….

Coral bleaching and death at Lizard Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

XL Catlin Seaview Survey via Associated Press

CLIMATE CRISIS

Obituary: The Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)

15th October 2016

“The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old.” So begins Rowan Jacobsen’s moving obituary for the world’s largest living structure. With 2,900 individual reefs and 1,050 islands, it’s larger than the United Kingdom, and it contained more biodiversity than all of Europe combined….

ALTERNATIVES

Mushrooms can save the world (and put Monsanto out of business)

13th October 2016

EcoSnippets reports: According to Paul Stamets, one of the world’s leading mycologists, his patented ‘smart pesticides’ can provide a safe and nearly permanent solution for controlling over 200,000 species of insects – and all thanks to the ‘magic’ of mushrooms. In fact, pesticide industry executives have called it “the most disruptive technology we have ever witnessed.”…

Digests/Specials

Was Fukushima the worst environmental disaster in human history?

9th October 2016

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….

CLIMATE CRISIS

James Hansen: Climate Change is ‘young people’s burden’, Paris treaty a fraud

7th October 2016

Former NASA scientist James Hansen is widely regarded as ‘the father of climate change awareness’. His new paper, titled ‘Young People’s Burden’, outlines how — if governments don’t take aggressive climate action today—future generations will inherit a climate system so altered it will require prohibitively expensive— and possibly infeasible— extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere….

Bookshelf

Video & Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

4th October 2016

Trees operate on very different time-scales from the ones we are used to, both in terms of life-spans and in terms of how long it takes them to process information and translate it into action. Is this the main reason why we find it so difficult to recognise them as truly sentient beings, Wohlleben wonders….

Adivasi groups protested against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's film, ‘MSG-2 the Messenger’

Conflict/Dispossession

Botswana prez is ‘Racist of the Year’; Indian godman among nominees

3rd October 2016

Survival International has given its “Racist of the Year” award for 2016 to President Ian Khama of Botswana. The award is given annually to the person displaying the greatest prejudice against tribal peoples. Nominees in 2016 included Australian cartoonist Bill Leak and Indian godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, whose film MSG-2 depicts tribal people as “evil”….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Point of no return: Earth breaches 400ppm climate threshold, permanently

30th September 2016

Climate Central reports: In the centuries to come, history books will likely look back on September 2016 as a major milestone for the world’s climate. 2016 will be the year that carbon dioxide officially passed the symbolic 400 parts per million mark, never to return below it in our lifetimes, according to scientists at NASA….

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….

P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India

ALTERNATIVES

India can avoid future water wars by mixing old and new solutions

16th September 2016

Chetan Chauhan reports: Maharashtra and Rajasthan have started community based Jal Swabhilambhan schemes that give ownership of government-aided watershed management to the communities. “We just aid and assist the villagers in creating durable water assets. The villages decide what they want,” said Sriram Vedire of Rajasthan Water Authority, who initiated the programme in early 2016….

Bookshelf

Kevin Kelly on the 12 technological forces that will shape our future

15th September 2016

We will soon have artificial intelligence that can accomplish professional human tasks. Our lives will be totally 100% tracked by ourselves and others. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends already in motion, and are impossible to halt without halting civilization, says Internet pioneer Kevin Kelly….

Conflict/Dispossession

Video & Report: Cauvery face-off puts spotlight on water wars

13th September 2016

Live Mint reports: This is not a one-off dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu— the latest flare-up puts the spotlight on the growing incidence of water wars among states and, in some instances, within regions in a state. Riparian states warring over water is not new— nearly every river in the Indian subcontinent is contested….

Artists impression of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT)

Development/Growth

Smart cities: Too smart for their own good?

12th September 2016

G. Sampath writes: The smart city paradigm signals a momentous shift that takes the agenda of privatisation beyond the takeover of public utilities, and inaugurates the formal privatisation of governance itself. An exclusive focus on technology in discussions of the smart city paradigm can blind one to its real driver—the global crisis of capital accumulation….