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wildlife

Nuno Andre Ferreira

CLIMATE CRISIS

Digest: The manmade forest fires of the Himalayan foothills

4th May 2016

There are almost 400 fires in the Himalayan foothills currently, which have killed five people and finished off at least 19 square kilometres of forest. The timber mafia and ordinary folks are known to illegally set fire in the Himalayan foothills, to fell trees, but its uncontrollable nature this year also points to micro-climatic changes….

Pratham Books

ALTERNATIVES

Development is for the people: A talk by Madhav Gadgil

1st May 2016

The full text of a recent talk given by prominent ecologist Madhav Gadgil, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010. It tries to explore the significant issue of when and why people turn against conservation….

Conflict/Dispossession

Jungle Book: Tribes threatened with eviction as Disney movie opens

10th April 2016

As the new Jungle Book movie is released, tribes across India are being illegally evicted from their lands because they’ve been turned into tiger reserves. One of these places is the iconic Kanha Tiger Reserve, the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s original novel, from where hundreds of Baiga and Gond tribespeople were illegally evicted in 2014….

The endangered Northern White Rhino

Culture/Cognition

Charles Eisenstein: In a Rhino, Everything

1st April 2016

A planet where caged wild animals go extinct is also one that warehouses its elderly in nursing homes. A world where the last white rhinos age in zoos is also a world of war, racism, poverty, and ecocide. It’s impossible for one to exist without the others. All are part of the same unholy matrix….

Frida Kahlo

Culture/Cognition

Atulya Bingham: Where did environmentalism go wrong?

29th March 2016

Atulya Bingham, author of ‘Mudball’, writes: With an unwavering fascination in the end of the world, environmentalism has attempted to scare humanity into acting, and we are now seeing just how spectacularly these scare tactics have failed. Not that the scare isn’t based on solid foundations, it’s more that apparently, scared people are not particularly effective at mobilising….

NEWS ARCHIVE

NEWS UPDATE #88

24th March 2016

Nihar Gokhale reports: Rainfall across India in March has been 300-500% higher and often were accompanied by hailstorms. As a result, winter crops across six Indian states – Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra – stand destroyed. Rain and the accompanying hail has damaged upto 60% standing winter crops across the country….

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

20th October 2015

‘Capitalism is Mother Earth’s Cancer’: World People’s Summit Issues 12 Demands Common Dreams Decrying capitalism as a “threat to life,” an estimated 7,000 environmentalists, farmers, and Indigenous activists from 40 countries convened in the Bolivian town of Tiquipaya for this weekend’s World People’s Conference on Climate Change, aiming to elevate the demands of social movements…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Shashank Kela: Some notes on the ecological crisis in India

25th July 2015

Who cares about the environment? Some notes on the ecological crisis in India Shashank Kela The past few months have been exceptional, in one respect at least, for the Indian press: a serious structural problem has actually been given the attention it deserves. The Economic Times continues to play a prominent part in discussing air pollution in…

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….

Conflict/Dispossession

Rohini Mohan: The Modi Government’s war on environment

15th October 2014

Basudev Mahapatra writes: Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, has “delinked forest clearance from clearance by the National Wild Life Board and halved NBWL clearance requirements from 10km to 5km around forest reserves, besides emasculating the Board by replacing eminent experts and concerned NGOs with rubber stamps. He has also relaxed procedures of the Forest Conservation Act….

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

7th October 2014

Ebola: Uncharted territory for a system in overshoot Mary Odum, Prosperouswaydown.com We are in uncharted territory with the Ebola virus disease (EVD). This pandemic signifies a turning point for society in response to peak oil, highlighting the problem of globalization for a planet of 7 billion people. We have lost control of a deadly outbreak, and our responses to…

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi and the Environment: The 100 day report

28th September 2014

Basic protections to safeguard the environment, that were not particularly strong to begin with, are being wiped out. While in general, faster moving transparent government processes are required, the Modi government’s predilection for protecting private corporations at the expense of public welfare, does not bode well for the environment nor the well-being of India’s peoples….

Development/Growth

11 environmental disasters Narendra Modi blessed in his first 100 days

29th August 2014

Jay Mazoomdar writes: Narendra Modi does mean business. So his government has gone about eliminating the policy paralyses that many claimed ailed the previous regime. This meant dismantling roadblocks that hamper economic growth. But here is what also happens to be under fire: laws and rules that safeguard India’s environment, forests, wildlife, and tribal rights….

Conflict/Dispossession

Environment Under Siege in New India

28th June 2014

Papri Sri Raman reports: The new environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, met Defense Minister Jaitley on June 10 and later announced a policy that would enable India’s border states with Pakistan, China and Burma to clear defense projects falling within 100kms of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), without approaching the union government for environment clearances….

Conflict/Dispossession

Mr Modi and the environment – A green vision or a grey area?

Avay Shukla writes: The most disappointing and worrying aspect of the recent elections, for me, has been the almost complete absence of any debate or discussion on the environment. Some political parties, the BJP included, did make weak proforma noises about it in their manifestos but there was no mention of it in their campaigning….

Conflict/Dispossession

Bittu Sahgal: Narendra Modi’s development plan: Will it hang India’s wildlife?

24th June 2014

The lion, tiger, turtle, butterfly, orchid, mudskipper and one-horned rhino will need every helping hand to survive the development ambitions of a nation that believes that economic ambitions can be fulfilled at the cost of its wildernesses. We know that’s not possible and hope that you will move us away from the subcontinent’s biological-climate precipice….

ENERGY

Peak oil and wildlife

10th October 2013

By T. Vjayendra and Shashank Srinivasan ABSTRACT Wildlife across the world is endangered due to habitat loss caused as a by-product of modern human society in the past 200 years. Most attempts at conservation have been unsuccessful in the face of the consumerist juggernaut because they are being carried out without questioning industrial society or…