Category: Environment, Forest and Climate change

Interview | ‘Adivasi Culture and the Forest Are Linked. PESA Looks After Both’

The Wire || Saahil Kejriwal and Rachita Vora || March 28, 2019

In conversation with Adivasi lawyer and social activist Lalsu Nogoti about the importance of engaging with law and politics to bring about social change.

Lalsu Nogoti is an independent elected member of the Zila Parishad in the district of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra. He is also the first lawyer from the Madia Gond Adivasi community in that district. A firm voice against large-scale diversion of forest land for numerous mining projects, Nogoti has also been part of several peoples’ movements against the state’s development policies. The focus of his work is on the effective implementation of laws that protect Adivasi rights. Read more

Climate change imperils Sundarbans tiger habitats

Mongabay || Sahana Ghosh || 26 March 2019

  • Royal Bengal tigers in the Bangladesh Sundarbans could be wiped off by 2070 due to a combination of climate change and sea level rise.
  • By 2050, researchers forecast a Ceriops-dominated mangrove stretch along the India-Bangladesh border would potentially be the last refuge of the big cats in the Sundarbans.
  • Transboundary conservation measures by the Bangladesh and Indian governments are needed urgently otherwise the fate of the tiger will be the same in the entire Sundarbans, said researchers.

In 50 years from now, by 2070, the entire population of Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans mangroves in Bangladesh is likely to be lost to climate change and sea level rise, a modeling study by Bangladesh and Australian researchers has predicted. Read more

Kids suffer most in one of Earth’s most polluted cities

National Geographic || BETH GARDINER || March 26, 2019

In winter, coal stoves and power plants choke Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, with smoke—and lung disease.

ULAANBAATAR, MONGOLIACoal is everywhere in Mongolia’s frigid capital. It sits beneath the towering smokestacks of power plants in piles as big as football fields. Drivers haul it through town in the open beds of pickup trucks. Vendors stack yellow bags of the stuff along roadsides, and jagged pieces spill from metal buckets in the round felt yurts where the poorest families burn it to keep out the bitter cold. Read more

Why we desperately need the Aravallis if we want to survive

Dailyio || Neha Sinha || March 27, 2019

The Aravallis are much more than an aesthetic setting to the National Capital Region. It is the natural entity that protects us from desertification, holds crucial water reserves and protects us from global warming.

Pretty things across the world are replaceable.

Irreplaceability, on the other hand, comes only if something is valued, seen as a unique entity, its own thing, an identity which has sovereignty, a place of dignity. North India’s Aravalli hills are not remarkably pretty. They do not have the sumptuous, plump orchids of the East Himalayas growing from bowers of trees. Nor the flaming red rhododendrons of the West Himalayas. They do not have biodiversity in numbers like that of the Western Ghats. To the untrained eye, the hills could look replaceable, even dry and barren. Read more

Cost of rising air pollution

By Altaf Patel, Mumbai Mirror | March 26, 2019

Unless authorities soon take corrective measures, people will see their quality of life diminish further.

The right to breath clean air is one of the most fundamental rights in the world. Clean air is critical to healthy human life. Pollution affects our health in myriad ways. From respiratory illnesses to damage to sexual organs to cardiovascular problems, the long-term effects of breathing poor quality air are well documented.

According to a new report, seven of the world’s 10 most polluted cities are in India. They include Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida and Patna. The study, by the software company AirVisual and NGO Greenpeace, ranked New Delhi at 11, making it the world’s most polluted capital, ahead of Dhaka and Kabul. Read more

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