The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
WHEN GAURA Devi of Reni village died on July 4, 1991, she must have been disillusioned. Two decades earlier, she inspired a group of women to chase away employees of a forest contractor -- and this act of courage and spontaneous defiance was hailed by the media as the start …
WOMEN were involved in popular agitations in Uttarakhand long before Chipko, but it is Chipko that produced courageous women who even dared to take on the state. In the Vyali forest agitation in Uttarkashi in 1974, women acted as messengers and lookouts because the men were under police surveillance. Some, …
IN JANUARY 1978, about 300 villagers from Almora district got together under the aegis of the Parvatiya Van Bachao Andolan and camped for 39 days in the Chanchridhar forests near Dwarahat. Bipin Tripathi, the block pramukh (chief) of Dwarahat, explained why: "We did not want Kashmiri Lal, the contractor of …
1973 • Chipko is born when villagers of Mandal, near Gopeshwar, led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt and the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, stop contractors of an Allahabad-based sports goods company, Symonds, from felling 14 ash trees on April 24. • In December, villagers again stop Symonds agents at the Phata-Rampur …
"NO WOMAN ever had to hug a tree to protect it," says Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the founder of Chipko. "It was not necessary to do so, for the mere threat was enough." The concept of hugging a tree to defend it was so powerful, it brought in a new consciousness …
INDIA is the first country to make environmental auditing compulsory. Countries such as the UK and the Netherlands have encouraged their industries to conduct audits since the mid-1980s, but it's not mandatory. The ministry for environment and forests (MEF) has decided to postpone from May 15 to September 30 the …
A significant provision for forests in this year's Union budget may turn out to be a case of missing the forest for the trees. Motivated by a desire to "protect the environment and to save wood," Singh cut the excise duty on plywood from 34.5 per cent to 20 per …
RESIDENTs of oil-rich Rivers State in Nigeria are protesting the environmental impact of years of oil exploration. "Oil spills and blowouts have made our farmlands infertile, polluted our streams and fishing lagoons and damaged ecosystems beyond repair,'. complains Ken Saro-Wiwa of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, which …
WHENEVER a dictionary of green terms is written, even if it is in English, it will contain at least one Hindi word. And that word is Chipko. The idea that people are prepared to hug trees to save them from being felled excited and enthused so many people across the …
SMALL is beautiful, but not always sufficient - and this is the shortcoming that a new Filipino farming technique seeks to tackle, This method, called conservation. farming, uses the natural forest as its model but makes traditional practices more scientific and systematic and does away with costly and possibly damaging …
Harmless pesticides can be prepared for home gardens from -recipes compiled by the International Institute ofRural Reconstruction in the Philippines: Tobacco: Place tobacco leaves, stems and dust in a container. Add boiling water and cover. After 3-4 hours, dilute with four parts of water and spray on plants. It kills …
THE ABORTION pill RU486 developed by French drug company Roussel-Uclaf may be available soon in the US market, following meetings between Rous-sel-Uclaf president Edouard Sakiz and US food and drugs commissioner David Kessler. Women's groups are eagerly awaiting RU486, but anti-abortion groups in USA are threatening,a boycott of the US …
ENVIRONMENTAL issues are making their mark on Indian television. Doordarshan features the science and environment programme Turning Point each week in a prime-time slot, hitherto reserved for Hindi serials. News programmes such as The World This Week and Parakh also frequently spotlight coverage of environmental conflicts. A recent edition of …
As a representative of an NGO from the North that looks into issues of the South, how do you react to conflicts between the South's priorities in sustainable development and those of the North? It's a curious situation for an activist to realise the despondency of the situation. It's not …
MOUNTAINS have always enjoyed a special status. Their beauty and mysticism have inspired poets, philosophers and even fairy-tale tellers. We accept their importance as sources of minerals and water, rare plants and wildlife. But what we have never realised is the plight of mountains. Though uplands cover roughly 20 per …
MAHATMA Gandhi's Sevagram ashram in Maharashtra was the appropriate site for a recent conference marking the birth centenary of J C Kumarappaan economist who became one of Gandhiji's closest associates and the most ardent advocate of his ideas on rural development. Through prolific writing in books and magazines over a …
MAHATMA Gandhi wanted Indian economics to be based on facts and figures obtained through rigorously scientific surveys. In 1930, he urged J C Kumarappa to conduct an economic survey of Matar taluka, a famine-stricken area in Gujarat's Kaira district. Kumarappa's pathbreaking study of conditions prevailing in rural India is still …
On the virtues of a natural life If we have to utilise as food the nutritious elements found in nature, we may get gur from palm trees that grow wild on uncultivable lands and obtain the whole benefit of the sap, minus the water which it contains, along with the …
ENVIRONMENTALISTS are concerned that plans by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to provide Cambodia with a US $3.78 million aid package, includes supply of 30 tonnes of insecticides worth US $800,000. Japan Tropical Forest Action Network, an NGO, reports two of the chemical fertilisers are diazinon and sumicidin, which are …
TRIBALS from 23 villages in Udaipur district, citing the potential displacement of 12,000 people, are gearing up for protracted battle with the government to scrap the proposed Manasi Wakal dam, intended to supply drinking water to Udaipur. The villagers allege the project, in fact, was conceived to meet the massive …
