Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Are missing palm trees causing more lighting deaths in Bihar appearing in ‘The Times of India’ dated 29.05.2025". The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Are missing palm trees causing …
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ABANI KUMAR BHAGABATI, GUWAHATIthe Karbi Anglong district in Assam, the homeland of the Karbi tribe, is on the brink of an economic and ecological crisis. A high rate of population growth and overuse of land for shifting cultivation known as jhumming have led to alternative means of increasing productivity. While …
Sun-kissed sands and fisherfolk cracking coconuts at the edge of palm-fringed villages - this could very well be another day in Paradise! But the truth is that Madagascar's ecology is just living on the edge. The world's fourth largest island today has as much as 90 per cent of its …
in order to wean away Tripura's tribals from their traditional jhum (slash and burn) cultivation, a comprehensive rehabilitation package worth Rs 120 crore with rubber plantation as the main source of income, has been envisaged. Targetting 14,000 ha, the project is aimed at rehabilitating 15,000 tribals within the next five …
You were a part of the new wave of agri. culture in the"60s and beyond. You helped mechanise farming through the 2-wheel tractor, but later called it a big mistake. Why? We failed to ask ourselves a fundamental question: does the tractor mechanise agriculture or does it mechanise the buffalo? …
The slasb-and-burn method of cultivation is ecologically disastrous and economically fruitless for the tribals. To provide a viable alternative to this shifting cultivation, the Social Forestry Project of Orissa in collaboration with the Swedish International Development Agency chose 14 landless tribals in Bhatiguda village of the state as beneficiaries under …
Looks can deceive. If you saw the meagre frame of 35 year-old Sarojini Pradhan, you would dare not suggest that she had led some 3 score women in tying up a forester who had been surreptitiously felling young sal trees. Pradhan is the president of the Mahila Mandal (women's organisation) …
Asunati Khonara, 65 of village Prapamunda, a mother of 4, is a Kond adivasi woman. With the establishment of NIPDIT in 1982, she became the animator of the Dadaki Cluster Level Organisation. She has been the vital force behind the people of 16 villages giving up shifting cultivation and going …
FROM the humid green of the Amazon to the drier climes of the deep Congo, shifting agriculture has been practised down the ages by communities confronted with lush forests. Today, tropical forests are recognised as a global resource and attract international concern. And the swidden cultivator is increasingly being perceived …
THE colonial myth that shifting cultivation, a traditional farming practice, is the hangover of a dying past still finds devotees from among the Indian bureaucracy. The draft Conservation of Forests and Natural Ecosystems Act proposed in 1994 seeks to give more teeth to the prohibitory powers of forest officers to …
IN ANDHRA Pradesh, woodlots maintained by farmers are the venues of social, cultural and religious festivals. In the northeast, much of the cultural life of the people revolves around events in the jhum calendar. Agroforestry has been around in India for a long time: the traditional practices have evolved in …
Shifting cultivation has been criticised as unscientific and blamed for the environmental problems in the hills. Do you agree? On the contrary, shifting agriculture is a fine example of how a production system can be adapted to an ecological niche. Very often shifting cultivation is talked about as a single …
SLASH-and-burn cultivation immediately conjures images of destruction. One imagines vast areas of smouldering forest land dotted with burnt out tree stumps. But this method of farming, also known as swidden cultivation, is actually a sustainable form of forest agriculture. The technique of slash-and-burn cultivation has been practised by generations of …
BORNEO'S dense, virgin rainforests are interspersed with large, naked patches where trees have been plucked out by loggers. Meandering rivers such as the Baram that run through the forests have turned red with silt washed down from the now-barren hillsides. The government and the timber companies, however, blame tribal shifting …
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 …
TRAVELLING north through the Brahmaputra valley, you come to a diversion to Tejpur and a three-km bridge, the second spanning the river. On the north bank, a national highway goes all the way to North Khimpur. You pass by tea gardens standing in disciplined rows and you are overwhelmed by …
FOR the first time possibly since independence, the forest cover in India has recorded an increase. The green cover has gone up from 19.47 per cent to 19.49 per cent, with an annual incremental growth of- 28,000 ha, says the latest issue of The State of Forest Report, prepared by …
ARUNACHAL Pradesh is one of the greenest states in India. Yet today, despite having only seven persons to a square kilometre and about 8.4 million ha of rich vegetation, the state is gravely threatened by deforestation. Forest officials claim an almost 14 per cent increase in forest cover between 1980 …
Energy problems have reached alarming proportions in the Tawang and Bomdilla areas. Since the last five years, Choizm, of Khamba hamlet of Lohu basti in Tawang, has been hiring help at the rate of Rs 40 per day and paying Rs 1,000 for a truckload of firewood. She has also …
Arunachal Pradesh's tribals believe they have an absolute right over the state's land and forests. The state takes a different view of the matter. The entire area lying between the McMohan Line and the Inner Line is technically owned by the state. In actual practice, government land constitutes only 26.16 …
