-National Alliance of People’s Movements A historic mobilization of more than 1 lakh farmers, farm workers and agrarian masses belonging to a wide variety of social movements from across India descended upon New Delhi today. Protestors at the 'Kisan Khet Mazdoor Mahapanchayat'  came to show their collective commitment towards getting the government’s attention to reverse the grave agrarian crisis caused by liberalization reforms supporting foreign investors, corporations; reforms that support elite...

-The Hindu Paper products made out of elephant and rhinoceros excreta are a duo’s idea of nature conservation. Innovation can be described as finding creative solutions to a problem. And if the solution happens to solve more than one problem, then that’s a huge bonus. Retired Coal India engineer M.C. Bora and his daughter Nisha Bora recently hit upon a unique solution to protect the wildlife in the eastern state of Assam,...

-The United Nations Some 2,000 representatives from 150 governments, indigenous groups, businesses and civil society today gathered at a United Nations-backed conference in Bangkok, Thailand, which aims to find ways to stop wildlife poaching and illegal trading. At the conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), delegates will examine some 70 proposals to amend the current wildlife trade system, which has been in...

-The Guardian The government's decision to allow major infrastructure projects to go ahead without obtaining consent for forest clearance paves the way for the violation of village land rights, say rights groups Land and tribal rights in India have been dealt a new blow after the government announced last week that major infrastructure projects will be exempt from obtaining consent for forest clearance from tribal communities living in the forest, a decision...

-IPS News Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report. The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical...