Environmental Protection

Environment, human rights and class power

Environment is human right, said and resolved a recent UN meet. It’s a reiteration of an already discussed issue – essential to all of the human society. It’s a much important issue to the peoples in countries facing forces ravaging environment; and, ravaging of environment is an act against people as the act denies people’s right to life and existence.[Read More...]

Integrity Due Diligence Necessary To Curb Illegal Mining

If a bridge collapses soon after construction, the contractor would be blacklisted. If someone cheats a bank, they will not be allowed to manage public moneys, whether in a bank, mutual fund, insurer or even as a KYC processor. But if someone illegally mines our shared inheritance of mineral wealth, we wonder why there is no such prohibition. India’s National[Read More...]

Killer Apes and Global Ecocide

by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young About four million years ago, we departed from our closest ancestors – the chimpanzees. This allowed us to become what we are today: human beings, the upright walking homo erectus and homo faber – the toolmaking hominids. Crucially, this also means that we are descendants of the chimpanzees and not of the neighbors next door – the bonobos, who were mistakenly also known as[Read More...]

Several Serious  Environmental Problems Have to be Resolved Simultaneously For A Safe Future

          There is widespread agreement that a number of very serious environmental problems together threaten the future of our planet. These problems inter-act with each other, are related to each other  and at a practical level, we and other species have to bear their combined burden at the same time. Despite this rather obvious reality the response to these problems[Read More...]

The Dreaded Rainforest Shift

Major portions of the Amazon rainforest have shifted from a carbon sink to a carbon source. This shift has severe planet-wide negative implications. Studies of the Amazon Rainforest over the past decade have shown telltale signals of an impending shift from a carbon sink of heat-trapping gases to a source of greenhouse gases. It’s a dangerous shift that will destabilize[Read More...]

Murder, Rape, and Torture: Fortress Conservation on Trial

On November 1, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres opened his remarks at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, with these words: “The six years, since the Paris Climate Agreement, have been the six hottest years on record. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it, or[Read More...]

Kunming Declaration & Biodiversity Fund Set a Path toward a More Just Global Biodiversity Framework

In August 2019, in the middle of heavy monsoon rain and floods, my sister Sudakshina Sen (an avid wildlife photographer) and I arrived at the Western Ghats in southwest India, a global biodiversity hotspot. One day, we got stuck on the sinuous state highway SH-78, due to fallen trees on the road from the storm. Parked by the roadside was[Read More...]

Special Significance of Protecting Boral River  

If people in India are told that the Ganga and Jamuna meet in Bangladesh then they will not believe this easily as they know very well that the Ganga and the Yamuna/Jamuna meet at the famous sangam (confluence) near Prayagraj, or near the city of Allahabad, a very famous place of pilgrimage as well as tourist interest.  However the fact[Read More...]

Beyond Science: Art and the Environment

In 1871 photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran joined an expedition to the Yellowstone region of the United States, which they documented in a series of powerful and moving creative works. Soon after, Jackson’s and Moran’s images became the catalysts for Congress to designate the very first national park at Yellowstone. This little-known detail, that artists played a major[Read More...]