On a sunny afternoon of March 18, 2020, while lost in his dreams, Sukaldhar Yadav was jolted awake by an urgent knocking on his door. "My nephew is down with…
Kaliamma Nanjan, 70, sings as she cuts through her farm in Kerala's Western Ghats. She deftly navigates the slopes of Attappady in Palakkad district with the gravity-defying dexterity of a…
India became a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1994. The CBD is a multilateral treaty aimed at conserving biodiversity, its sustainable use and ensuring “fair and…
Odisha’s Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR), which spreads across an area of 2,200 square kilometres, is caught between the animals, which have earned it national fame, and the local tribal people…
Battling environmental challenges and protests, ecotourism operators in several parts of India, have called for building community resilience as they take stock of losses amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19)…
Even as modern science grapples with the rapidly declining bee population, we could look back and take a lesson on sustainability from the ancient culture of the adivasis (the first…
To ensure that businesses in India are responsible, sustainable and respect basic human rights, the government of India is in the process of finalising its National Action Plan on Business…
A resident of Dhangaon village in Jharkhand’s Gumla district, Anirudh Gope used to cultivate paddy during monsoon on his one-acre farm. He was bound by seasonal farming and single-crop cultivation…
Resistance among villagers that led to the South Korean steel company, POSCO, pulling out of the 12 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) integrated steel plant with captive power plant project…
In India, on average, at least 10,600 people are impacted by each ongoing land conflict. The number crosses 21,300 in the land conflicts involving mining projects, reveals a recent study…
From covering 640,819 square kilometres (19.49 percent) of India’s total land area in 1987 to covering 712,249 sq. km. (21.67 percent) of the country’s geographical area in 2019, India’s forest…
Every year millions of Indians, who belong to scheduled tribes, collect Rs. two trillion (Rs. 200,000 crore) worth of non-timber forest products (NTFP) from the country's forests. However, in the…
They may be hundreds of kilometres away from the Indian mainland, but the rich forests and the biodiversity in the strategically important Andaman and the Nicobar Islands (ANI) face pressures…
A recent article in Mongabay-India about how to deal with forest fires in India argues that fire suppression should be replaced by fire prevention with the help of local communities.…
At least twice, the staid kalam tree (Mitragyna parvifolia), standing tall on a mound surrounded by farms in a nondescript village in the hilly areas of western Madhya Pradesh has…
With a yellow towel wrapped around his shoulders, Ganesh Majhi, 54, of Deogada village, in Belghar gram panchayat of Odisha’s Kandhamal district, is angry about the teak trees in the…
Cooking gas is an unnecessary luxury, said Simaru Kandi from Musapada village in Odisha’s Puri district. “Nature has given us all resources to lead a bountiful life,” explained Simaru. “Whenever…
Before the semi-autonomous status of the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was abolished by the Union Government on August 5, 2019, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest…
From a bird’s eye view, this animal’s extensive presence in the snow-clad alpine and the subalpine Himalayas makes the landscape look like a crumpled white sheet punctuated with shaggy black…
How do you define a ‘forest’? What are the rules regarding inviolate forests? And when will India get its new national forest policy? Many questions loom even as India pursues…