Brazil’s big commercial hub, Sao Paulo, went dark on Wednesday afternoon. I’ve been to Sao Paulo in late August. It is bright. Accu-Weather quoted Brazilian meteorologist Josélia Pegorim from an O Globo interview: “The smoke didn’t come from fires in the state of Sao Paulo, but from very dense wildfires that have been happening for several days in Rondônia and Bolivia.” That[Read More...]
DemocraciaAbierta had access to PowerPoints from a meeting between members of the Bolsonaro government. The slides show that the current government intends to use the president’s hate speech to diminish the power of minorities living in the region and to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact for the Amazon. Leaked documents show that Jair Bolsonaro’s government[Read More...]
The Amazon is burning and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is to blame. That’s the general consensus from observers and green groups who say the right-wing firebrand’s anti-environmental policies shoulder the lion’s share of the responsibility for thousands of fires across the rainforest, known as the world’s lungs The fires, as writer Wendi Muse pointed out on Twitter, aren’t spontaneous, but[Read More...]
By CDRO AND GASS On August 18, a report titled “Corporate Loot and People’s Resistance in Niyamgiri” was released at the CDRO Convention on UAPA and other Draconian Law held in Jalandhar, Punjab. The report is an outcome of a joint fact-finding visit by a 16-member team from April 26-28, 2019 from All India Coordination of Democratic Rights Organization (CDRO)[Read More...]
Many lobbyists talk a lot about critics of genetic engineering technology denying choice to farmers. They say that farmers should have access to a range of tools and technologies to maximise choice and options. At the same time, somewhat ironically, they decry organic agriculture and proven agroecological approaches, presumably because these practices have no need for the proprietary inputs of the[Read More...]
Co-Written by Meena Miriam Yust and Arshad Khan When Chelsea Rochman at the University of Toronto and colleagues began their study on medakas (small Japanese rice paddy fish), they did not expect to find what they did. They first soaked ground-up polyethylene in San Diego Bay for three months and then fed it to these fish along with a laboratory diet. They[Read More...]
The poem is based on a brief observational study done by my team and I on the Pirana landfill site in Ahmedabad. The poem is meant as a satirical take on the social and environmental repercussions of landfill sites, and our attempts to not acknowledge the same. It is intended not to preach, but provoke individuals to take cognizance of[Read More...]
Rainforests are a crucial feature of Earth’s biosphere. Apart from being critical to Earth’s climate and vital carbon sinks, the major player in Earth’s hydrological (water) cycle, a massive producer of oxygen and home to most of the world’s species, rainforests are the home of a large indigenous human population. They are also the source of many vital resources, including[Read More...]
Sabarmati is reminiscent of the times of Mahatma Gandhi who set up his Ashram on its banks. Today, the Sabarmati river reminds us of the ambitious riverfront project taken up by our Prime Minister, which resulted in a stretch of glistening yet stagnant water. The lesser noticed river stretch downstream is no more than a channel that carries sewage from[Read More...]
Today, we are in the grip of a globalised system of capitalism which drives narcissism, domination, ego, anthropocentrism, speciesism and plunder. A system that is using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated. We have poisoned the rivers and oceans, destroyed natural habitats, driven wildlife species to (the edge of) extinction and have altered[Read More...]
