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People’s Policy as Public Policy: Safeguarding Democracy and Building Citizenship
Sixth Conference of the Network for Rural and Agrarian Studies on ‘State policy, Natural Resources and Agrarian Change’
To encourage Indian researchers in the early part of their careers to take up public interest oriented research in the Indian energy sector
Exploratory workshop on wild/forest foods
A unique 9-day learning experience, in a country where environment and ancient traditions & values are being preserved carefully while walking the road to modernization
For Hosting the 7th International Degrowth Conference (Foreseen for 2020)
Programmes include International Seminar, Exhibition, Women & Biodiversity Festival, Youth Biodiversity Summit, Civil Society Meet, Workshops, National Photography Exhibition, and Documentary Film Festival
A three-month intensive mentoring programme where interested activists will get hands-on experience of organizing workers, engaging with government bodies, etc
Kerry Emanuel writes: There are strong cultural biases against discussion of ‘tail risk’ in climate science; particularly the accusation of “alarmism”. Does the dictum to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” not apply to climate scientists? If we omit discussion of tail risk, are we really telling the whole truth?
Down to Earth
Sopan Joshi writes: Sanitation links the rich to the poor, the land to the water, the clean to the unclean, the sacred to the untouchable. But sanitation discussions among India’s elites is driven by a concern about India’s international image. If it evades our dirty realities, SBA will not go beyond an attempted image makeover.
“These machines shape the way we view reality. We’re not just merging with machines, but with the companies that run these machines—who run these machines for profit. And here’s the existential threat… these technologies will change what it means to be human. Once we take this leap, it will be very hard to reverse course.”
HIGHLIGHTS: *India Facing Worst Water Crisis In History: NITI Aayog *Delhi’s air pollution literally off the chart *40,000 Indians evicted for ‘conservation’ in 2017 *India gets first biodiversity museum * BP’s global data for 2017 shows record highs for coal and renewables *Antarctic ice melting faster than ever *China testing roads paved with solar panels
From Nature: Science fiction is increasingly in the here and now. With technological change cranked up to warp speed and day-to-day life smacking of dystopia, where does science fiction go? Has mainstream fiction taken up the baton? Six prominent American science fiction writers reflect on what the genre has to offer about our common future.
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
Oil. The 20th century was shaped by it. The 21st century is moving beyond it. But who gave birth to the oil industry? What have they done with the immense wealth and power it granted them? And what are they planning to do with that power in a post-carbon world? The Corbett Report finds out.
Nanduwali in east Rajasthan started flowing again when the villagers decided to work with nature and not against it. There was a time when they believed that crops grow only with rainfall -lacking knowledge about the underground movement of water and how it can be enhanced. Today, the revived river is a lifeline to them.
HIGHLIGHTS: *Coal-fired power plants killing 80,000 adults in India yearly *Clashes erupt over water, power across India *Narmada flows “backwards”, sea water intrudes 72 km *Andhra to become India’s first Zero Budget Natural Farming state *Anti-coal mine activist shot dead In Jharkhand *CO2 levels exceed 411ppm *Puerto Rico death toll from Hurricane Maria near 5,000
Grown over a million acres of farmland, the HMT rice variety – developed by Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, a small cultivator and self-trained plant breeder – brought a measure of prosperity to several hundred thousand farmers in Maharashtra and neighbouring states. Bharat Mansata pays tribute to the legendary farmer and seed saver who died on Sunday
Bayer’s $66 billion takeover of Monsanto represents another big click on the ratchet of corporate power over farming and food. With the ‘Big-Six’ of global agribusiness now set to turn into the ‘even bigger three’, farmers and consumers face more GMOs and pesticides, less choice, and deeper price gouging. Agroecology has never looked more attractive.
From Climate Home News: Perhaps the most egregious fix, given the prominence of the issue and its consequences for Indians’ health, is the Modi government’s attempts to defer a December 2017 deadline for air pollution standards for thermal power plants. Without these, India’s hopes of reducing deadly air pollution from its electricity sector are nixed.
Reading about energy today, it’s easy to get the impression that our energy problem is a quality problem—some energy is polluting; other energy is hoped to be less polluting. There’s a different issue that we are not being told about. It’s the fact that having enough energy – quantity – is extremely important, as well.
Ratheesh Pisharody writes: The protest in Tuticorin and the police reaction to it is exactly what is expected in a society built on foundations of greed and injustice. Whose interest do you think the police is supposed to protect? Ours, the “middle class” of course. We need those cheap phones and air conditioners, don’t we?
HIGHLIGHTS: *India ranks 177 out of 180 in Environmental Performance Index globally *India most vulnerable country to climate change, says HSBC report *42 Indian rivers have extremely high concentration of neurotoxic heavy metals *Rural wage growth down from 8.4% under UPA to 0.2% under NDA: Crisil report *Renewable Energy Now Employs 10.3 Million People Globally
José Mujica was the President of Uruguay between 2010 and 2015 and was a former urban guerrilla fighter who was imprisoned for 13 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Often referred to as the “world’s most humble president”, he retired from office in 2015 with an approval rating of 70 percent.
‘As the waters rise,’ Jeff Goodell writes, ‘millions of people will be displaced, many of them in poor countries, creating generations of climate refugees that will make today’s Syrian war refugee crisis look like a high school drama production.’ There’s no longer any doubt that the rise in global sea levels will reshape human civilisation.
Dam’ned, a documentary by filmmaker Saraswati Kavula, takes a closer look at how the Polavaram Dam project affects the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people, with dubious benefits expected. Despite increasing evidence of the destructive consequences of big dams across the world, why do our governments keep pushing for these mega projects, she asks.
Tribals make up 26% of Jharkhand’s population. Recently, many Adivasi villages in Jharkhand have put up giant plaques declaring their gram sabha as the only sovereign authority and banning ‘outsiders’ from their area. The Hindu reports on a political movement that is gathering steam across the State’s tribal belt, originally inspired by the PESA Act.
Around 127 people died and 300 others injured during the severe dust and thunderstorms that shook north India on May 2; wind speeds of 126 kilometres making it the strongest storm in six years. The world may see more such freak storms due to rising temperatures; reducing pollution and protecting forests are perfect preventive measures.
With $405 billion in sales last year, Wal-Mart is so big, it casts a global shadow across the lives of hundreds of millions of people, from California to China. David Moberg takes closer look at the controversial policies of the retail giant, which recently made a backdoor entry into India by acquiring e-commerce major Flipkart.
HIGHLIGHTS: *Farmers To Stop Supplying Vegetables, Grains, Milk To Cities Across India For 10 Days *Only 20% of live water storage in reservoirs *50,000 farmers protest bullet train, expressway *SC rejects Monsanto plea *Costa Rica to ban fossil fuels *World’s largest insurer Allianz divests from coal *Tourism responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions
Martin Parker writes: B-school market managerialism sells a utopia for the wealthy and powerful, one which students are encouraged to imagine themselves joining. But it comes at a very high cost: environmental catastrophe, resource wars and forced migration, inequality within and between countries, the encouragement of hyper-consumption as well as persistently anti-democratic practices at work.
Jyoti Shinoli/People's Archive of Rural India
From PARI: The people of Aarey find their eviction and ‘rehabilitation’ absurd. Prakash Bhoir, 46, who lives in Keltipada, says, “We are Adivasis [he is a Malhar Koli]. This land is a source of income and survival for us. Can we do cultivation in those high-rise buildings? We just cannot live without soil and trees.”
The 900km, all-weather road enhancing connectivity between four major Hindu pilgrimage sites is PM Modi’s pet project. It will not only displace hundreds of people, but create a massive rush of pilgrims, putting untold pressure on the delicate Himalayan ecology. Experts say it’s also ill-conceived, given its location on the ‘floodway’ of the Ganga basin.
The pro-and anti-GMO positions will remain irreconcilably polarized as long as larger questions remain unexamined. What’s at stake here is much more than a choice about GMOs. It is a choice between two very different systems of food production, two visions of society, and two fundamentally different ways to relate to plants, animals, and soil.
HIGHLIGHTS: *14 of world’s 15 most polluted cities in India: WHO *5,000 Gujarat Farmers Seek Permission to Die *Hundreds of Tonnes of Illegal GM Seed Import Takes Place Into India *China, India lead the rise in global antibiotic consumption *Pakistan May Have Just Set a World Heat Record *EU agrees total ban on bee-harming pesticides
In this keynote address delivered at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the Post Carbon Institute’s Nate Hagens discusses how our lives will be influenced by how we react to the coming era of harder to extract and more costly fossil fuels that will be combined with cleaner but less concentrated energy types.
Ramesh Venkataraman writes: A common theme running through the policy document is increasing tree and canopy cover in all areas with low tree cover at present. While prima facie this seems to be a laudable objective that is aligned with climate change mitigation goals, this raises a number of questions from ecological and sustainability perspectives.
It was supposed to be the site of western France’s biggest airport, but instead, it became the center of a utopian experiment. Hundreds of squatters –eco-warriors to some, green jihadis to others– now live in the ZAD, which resisted a eviction operation after a 2,500 strong police unit recently forced their way into the camp.
Reuters/Danish Siddiqui
Ashish Kothari & Aseem Shrivastava write: The growing protests of farmers around the country-last month’s protests in Mumbai being the latest-is not just a claim for dignity. Even more portentously, it calls into question the paradigmatic rationality of the reigning development model. Alternatives do exist, practised and conceived of at hundreds of sites in India.
From If Not Us Then Who: Indigenous peoples live and work in the lands they protect–and have been found to be the most effective guardians of the world’s forests. This International Day of Forests, we are taking the opportunity to celebrate their work they’re doing globally to protect our forests, and, in turn, our planet.
HIGHLIGHTS: *Centre proposes relaxation of CRZ norms *44% probability of below-normal monsoon, reservoirs at 25% of live storage capacity *Farm income drops in 16 states *More than 95% of world’s population breathe dangerous air, major study finds *30% of Great Barrier Reef coral died in ‘catastrophic’ 2016 heatwave *Scientists accidentally create enzyme that eats plastic
Limiting global warming to 1.5C requires strictly limiting the total amount of carbon emissions between now and the end of the century. However, there is more than one way to calculate this allowable amount of additional emissions, known as the “carbon budget”. In this article, Carbon Brief assesses nine new carbon budget estimates released recently.
The Ganges and its tributaries are now subject to sewage pollution ‘half-a-million times over the recommended limit for bathing’ in places, not to mention unchecked runoff from heavy metals, fertilisers, carcinogens and the occasional corpse. ‘Where is this going?’ That’s the question at the heart of Victor Mallet’s book on the river, writes Laura Cole.
Both social equity and environmental sustainability are critical to our republic’s future. The present government seems bent on reversing the modest gains of the past three decades by making the corporate sector, once more, the key beneficiary of State forest policies. This is the inescapable conclusion one reaches after reading the ‘Draft Forest Policy, 2018’.
From The Conversation: Are Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge categorically antithetical? Or do they offer multiple points of entry into knowledge of the world? As ways of knowing, both systems share important and fundamental attributes. There are also many cases where science and history are catching up with what Indigenous peoples have long known.
