The 14 year old brother and 10 year old sister hurried with their mother across the crowded city to reach their grandmother’s shop by the road side . Most evenings they came here to help the grandmother pack up the containers and other materials, untie the long chain of masks that she sold ever since Covid phase and also drop[Read More...]
by Rosemary Mason and Colin Todhunter The volume of pesticide use and exposure is occurring on a scale that is without precedent and world-historical in nature. Agrichemicals are now pervasive as they cycle through bodies and environments. The herbicide glyphosate has been a major factor in driving this increase in use. These statements appear in a 2021 paper ‘Growing Agrichemical[Read More...]
The first step in reviewing any new legislation or amendment to an existing legislation, is to understand the intent and purpose of what is proposed. In reviewing the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 as introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 9th, 2021, the intent and purpose are evident through the reading of the following: (i) Section 4 of[Read More...]
For a long time a gigantic and recklessly ambitious project proposed in India for linking about 37 rivers at 30 or more places had been largely dormant. Things started moving in its favor after the 2014 elections and the installation of the NDA government. Within about two years this project had been pushed ahead quite a bit.Now with the[Read More...]
The financial wizards of Wall Street have devised a new way to profit from Mother Nature. They’ve created a class of stocks called Natural Asset Companies that will control the earth’s resources such as water, wildlife, forests, minerals, and farmland. The project was developed by the Intrinsic Exchange Group in partnership with the New York Stock Exchange, the Inter-American Development[Read More...]
Ecocide must be elevated into an international crime—on a par with genocide and war crimes—and fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The first United Nations Scientific Conference on the Environment, also known as the First Earth Summit, was held in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 6-15, 1972. Ιt established a Declaration of Principles and adopted an action plan with recommendations for[Read More...]
In October 2020, Pesticide Action Network India and PAN Asia Pacific released the report ‘State of Glyphosate Use in India’. It concluded that the use of the world’s most widely used herbicide is rampant. Despite this, it noted that its disturbing effects on the environment and the health of farmworkers and the public are not being addressed (see: State of Glyphosate[Read More...]
The paradox of combating climate change is that the extent of the emergency extends far beyond the actions taken by individuals to mitigate the climate crisis, yet collective action is what is most required to address this issue. There are so many examples of this dilemma—from recycling to how power is being generated, to what people should consume. In each case, broad-based action is required[Read More...]
As children in Bangalore we always found dragonflies in the garden. Catching them by their papery wings we would cruelly tie strings to their tails. Seeing them sail about the garden with the strings trailing behind them, set us off into paroxysms of childish laughter. Those wonderful icons of our childhood which were found in abundance across the world are[Read More...]
On December 1, 2021, a bench of the Rajasthan High Court comprising Chief Justice Akil Qureshi and justice Sudesh Bansal ordered that notices be sent to the state government over rampant illegal mining of stone in the Thob village of Barmer district in Rajasthan. Over 20 letters have been written to local police, officials of the district administration and the[Read More...]
