-The Hindu Navamy Sudhish reports on the disastrous impact of extreme climate events, rising fuel prices, destructive fishing practices, and overexploitation on livelihoods and biodiversity As dawn breaks, Vitalis slowly glides into undulating waves below an azure sky. With a sparse crew of six, she bobs towards the fishing ground some 10 nautical miles off the shore. The boat returns after five hours, its hold nearly empty. A pall of gloom settles...

-Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Delhi The report Regulating Urban Trees in India: Issues and Challenges by Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon (published in July, 2022), highlights the scope and functions of a dozen tree laws implemented in different states in India. The implementation of these laws has come to public focus in recent years due to the growing number of cases of large-scale tree felling in Indian cities. The government use of mechanisms...

-Scroll.in With climate change, farmer suicides and agicultural distress, the drought-resilient coarse grain that requires few resources could be the answer. Already caught in a vicious cycle of debt and declining yields, Indian farmers now face new challenges from climate change. The Ministry of Earth Science, in a 2020 report, predicts, “Rising temperatures, heat extremes, and increasing year-to-year rainfall variability are likely to adversely impact crop yield.” India’s Green Revolution of the 1960s...

-The Telegraph In the last two decades, forest and biodiversity conservation in the country has meant ruthless and unjust evictions of the people and communities living in their midst Earlier this month, a small hamlet called Bothli in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district pressed for the legal recognition of its community forest rights. Wildlife conservationists promptly filed a public interest litigation claiming that the people living in the...

-TheWire.in * The proposed Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill 2021 encourages a conducive environment for investments and to simplify the patent application process. * Farmers in India have historically been against any kind of IP rights – whether patents or plant variety protection over seed and planting materials. * In a confused mix of laws, the government also grants IP rights to BMCs for farmers’ varieties – formed under the Biological Diversity Act –...