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Nationwide tour to restore and protect the core values of our Constitution and democracy – organised by National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements
An online course for students and development practitioners – from Azim Premji University
Immersive Residential Workshop on Eco-Construction, vernacular architecture and sustainable living.
One week residential course to understand the urgency in combating the crisis of industrialism and various alternatives to it
International Workshop on Solar Energy and Climate Change: Planning for a Sustainable Kerala
Introductory Natural Farming Course in English at the farm founded by the late Bhaskar Save – the ‘Gandhi of Natural Farming’
International Conference on Conservation and Sustainable Management of Riverine Ecosystems, The 11th Biennial Lake Conference
Introductory workshop on participatory environmental governance – Through citizen monitoring and actions
A three-month intensive mentoring programme where interested activists will get hands-on experience of organizing workers, engaging with government bodies, etc
‘Introduction to Mapping and Geographical Information Systems using Quantum GIS’ – from Azim Premji University
From Los Angeles Times: As yet another mega-fire rages through California, we present the powerhouse 1996 essay by Mike Davis, covering history, science, Marxist analysis — and a certain amount of trolling. Its main point is that Californians will never accept that fire is not only common there, but part of its ecology going back
HIGHLIGHTS: *Study links groundwater exploitation to India’s carbon emissions spike *Farmers suffer as states yet to declare drought *3 reports sound alarm on ocean-warming *G20 nations still led by fossil fuel industry: Report *Montreal Protocol assessment reveals healing ozone *69 of the richest 100 entities on the planet are corporations *Giraffes given ‘critically endangered’ status
Stefany Ann Goldberg writes: Famous for his plant-response studies, J.C. Bose was also the first scientist to study inorganic matter the way a biologist examines a muscle or a nerve. Bose performed his plant experiments on rocks and metals, too. Remarkably, he found that the “non-living” responded when subjected to mechanical, thermal, and electrical stimuli.
David Wallace-Wells writes: Brazil’s newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro just might test the proposition that no individual matters all that much to the climate. He plans to open the entire Amazon rainforest to agricultural development — the industrial-scale felling of trees, which, will release into the atmosphere all the CO2 they have stored inside them.
From The Business Standard: “Selected companies like Reliance, Essar have been given the task of providing crop insurance. In just one Maharashtra district, where the soya crop failed, Reliance earned a net profit of Rs 143 crore without investing a single rupee. Now, multiply this amount to each of the districts it has been entrusted.”
The recent Special Report by the IPCC was widely described as giving a stark warning about risks faced by humanity if climate change is not dealt with urgently. What exactly does this imply, and how reliable is this document? We present analyses by Michael Mann, Richard Heinberg, Ratheesh Pisharody, Adam Markham, Kevin Anderson and Padmini Gopal.
HIGHLIGHTS: *18,000 Maharashtra villages already declared drought-prone Farmers from across India to hold protest rally in Delhi on Nov 30 *Protests force Ladakh motor rally to change course *60% of Earth’s wildlife wiped out since 1970 *Only 23% of landmass survives as wilderness *Research finds large buildup of ocean heat *Petrochemicals lead oil demand growth
Illustration: Sumit Kumar/BBC
This is a snapshot of a fleeting encounter between a Karnataka farmer and a water activist at the premises of a leading agricultural university. In a few painful sentences, it captures the everyday desperation that is the lot of the average Indian farmer, caught between an unraveling climate, a ruthless market and a malignant state.
William Nordhaus’ low-ball estimates of the costs of climate change and high-ball estimates of the costs of containing the threat contributed to a lost decade in the fight against climate change, lending intellectual legitimacy to denial and delay. The IPCC report, released the day Nordhaus got his Nobel, heightens the award’s absurdity, writes Eugene Linden.
Building the world’s largest nuclear power project in an ecologically fragile region like Konkan, along with attendant concerns of the safety, an unsteady French nuclear industry, will pose serious challenges to the environment, biodiversity, health and livelihoods of lakhs of people in the region. Is the Modi government courting a nuclear Bhopal, asks Sonali Huria.
A new group called Extinction Rebellion, has called for mass civil disobedience in the UK starting next month and promises it has hundreds of people – from teenagers to pensioners – ready to get arrested in an effort to draw attention to the unfolding climate emergency. The group is backed by almost 100 senior academics.
HIGHLIGHTS: *EU approves sweeping ban on single-use plastics *Spain to close most coal mines; Canada passes carbon tax *Yemen in danger of massive famine *Great Barrier Reef forecast warns of coral-death this summer *India Tax data shows shocking increase in corporate concessions * Ganga more polluted under Modi’s watch *75,000 tribals oppose Statue of Unity
From The Millions: When human leaders fail us as role models, we should look to animals, says Sy Montgomery. “I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you: with four legs or two or even eight. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.”
From The Guardian: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5 billion years.
From The Sunday Guardian: The Delhi metropolitan area has one of the world’s highest concentrations of population, and suffocating people here on an annual basis should be treated as a crime against humanity, especially when it can be controlled. Arvind Kumar writes on the connection between USAID, Monsanto and Delhi’s nightmarish annual air pollution spike.
We’re on track for four degrees of warming, more than twice as much as most scientists believe is possible to endure without inflicting climate suffering on hundreds of millions or threatening at least parts of what we call, grandly, “civilization.” The only thing that changed is that the scientists, finally, have hit the panic button.
HIGHLIGHTS: *NITI Aayog proposes green cess for the Himalayan region *Maharashtra heads towards a drier drought *Met dept calls Titli, Luban cyclones “rarest of rare” occurrences *Clean energy may save 11 mn life-years in India: Study *Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says *Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé worst plastic polluters globally
Most people have passed through some kind of initiation; a crisis that defies what you knew and what you were. Societies can also pass through a similar initiation. That is what climate change poses to the present global civilization. A key element of this transformation is from a geomechanical worldview to a Living Planet worldview.
Jason Hickel, Foreign Policy: Many policymakers have responded to ecological breakdown by pushing for what has come to be called “green growth.” It sounds like an elegant solution to an otherwise catastrophic problem. There is just one hitch: New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone hopes for. In fact, it’s not even possible.
From Frontier Weekly: The flood in Kerala, created by an overdrive in construction activities, which gave enormous profits to corporate capital, now demands reconstruction work on a giant scale, which only expands the market for corporations further. It is obvious that this is not what is required. The requirement is an alternative model of reconstruction.
A Special Report on Global Warming has been released today by the IPCC, considered the international benchmark on climate change. Ahead of it, Donald Brown reviewed three independent studies which show that climate change is a much more urgent and serious threat than indicated by past IPCC reports, and examines the ethical questions they raise.
HIGHLIGHTS: *India’s massive land grab in the name of Compensatory Afforestation *India eases green norms for realty *Russia signs pact for six nuclear reactors in India *Maharashtra slaps Rs 1,200 crore fine on Monsanto, others *Crucial IPCC report on climate change expected on Monday *‘Climate wrecker’ United States pushes its regressive agenda at IPCC talks
Ten years after the global financial crisis, a debt-fuelled world economy is headed towards another crash, the IMF has warned. With the Rupee at a record low, unemployment at a 20-year high, and 78 of its largest corporations defaulting on massive debts, India’s rapidly emerging as the epicentre of a crisis that could dwarf 2008.
From Mainstream Weekly: Dr. G. D. Agrawal (now Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) is one of India’s most distinguished environmental engineers, who served as the first Member-Secretary of India’s Central Pollution Control Board. Fasting for almost 100 days now to save the river Ganga, he’s now on his sixth, and in his own words, final “fast-unto-death”.
A research-paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by an academic journal, citing the emotional impact that it might have on readers. The paper offers a new framing to make sense of the disaster we face, called “deep adaptation.” It has now been released online by the author, Prof. Jem Bendell.
To the shock of greens everywhere, Indian PM Modi, whose government has absolutely the worst environmental track record in the country’s history, has been declared a UN “Champion of the Earth”. However, coming from Erik Solheim, the UN environment chief facing a string of corruption allegations himself, this ‘honour’ may not be all that surprising.
HIGHLIGHTS: *Ganges runs out of water; potential food shortage looms *Over 519 developmental projects cleared over 4-yrs threaten last wild areas in India *Report: India choked on 929 million tonnes of CO2 from thermal sector *Worst drought in a generation deepens in the Greater Horn of Africa *Monsanto’s glyphosate linked to global decline in honeybees
From The Indian Express: The residents of St. Estevam say they took to farming more due to fear of gated communities encroaching upon farmland. Nine months after the idea was mooted at the community level, this pilot project is now being tracked by the state government, which plans to take this experiment to every village.
From The New Republic: Climate scientists predict deadly tropical cyclones will become rainier; that they may move more slowly and venture further into the northern hemisphere; and the hurricane season may become longer. The developed world’s emissions will be responsible for these changes. But it is the developing world that may suffer the most from it.
Aseem Shrivastava writes: Tagore’s play Mukta-Dhara foretells the manner in which people across the country have been losing their freedom— those uprooted by development quite obviously so, those ‘benefitting’ from it (mostly living in cities) more subtly and invisibly. This is the ecologically fatal price of ‘progress’, which Rabindranath anticipated in much of his work.
David A. Banks writes in The Baffler: Engineering has not strayed far from its military origins… Engineers are trained to “plug into chain-of-command decision making structures… In times like these it is important to remember that border walls, nuclear missiles, and surveillance systems do not work, and won’t even exist, without the cooperation of engineers.
HIGHLIGHTS: *Arunachal, Assam and Sikkim battle deluge *SC order a fresh lease of life for Aravallis *First pre-event study finds climate change fingerprints all over Hurricane Florence *‘Direct existential threat’ of climate change nears point of no return: UN *Global hunger on rise, climate change to blame: UN *Air pollution particles found in mothers’ placentas
From The Hindu: It’s imperative that we abandon business as usual. We cannot just focus on man-made capital; but enhance the sum total of man-made, natural, human and social capital. The new regime that we usher in should acknowledge that it is local communities that have a genuine stake in the health of their ecosystems.
Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. Award-winning writer and activist Raj Patel makes the case that in making these things cheap, modern commerce has governed, transformed and devastated the earth. Also included, an interview with Patel and co-author Jason Moore.
Rajeev Suri writes: In keeping with his belief that most cases are being filed by blackmailers, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, the new Chairperson of the National Green Tribunal, has been following the three D rule; Dismiss, Dispose, Disburse. The Chairperson is also known for his previous association with the ruling party and strong RSS leanings.
From Non-gmoreport.com: The most disturbing finding of the study was the epigenetic effects of atrazine; which means its not just those who are exposed to it that faced health risks, but also their descendants. Dr. Winchester calls the discovery of this link between pesticides and epigenetic changes “the most important next discovery in all medicine.”
HIGHLIGHTS: *Floods in Assam, Nagaland and U.P. *SC Stays construction in all states pending Solid Waste Management policy *Govt claims India restored 9.8 million hectares of degraded land since 2011 *NGT forms panel on potable groundwater *Thousands march across US to protest environment crisis *Scientists calculate ‘point of no return’ for dealing with climate change
