DownToEarth The Aral Sea, the world’s fourth-largest lake until the early 1960s, dried up after that decade in Soviet Central Asia and became a byword for environmental disaster later, almost on the lines of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Now, a new study has found that the desert which emerged due to the drying up of the lake, has made Central Asia a much dustier place. Not only is the dust more hazardous...
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Moving Upstream: Luni – Fellowship
The Moving Upstream: Luni program is a continuation of Veditum’s Moving Upstream fellowship program which we co-host with the Out of Eden Walk. For the Luni program, we are partnering with the School of Pubic Policy at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, and this effort is supported by A4Store & Out of Eden Walk. The aim is to document the river and life in and around it, the impact of man-made...
More »FCA Amendment: No Forest For The Weary - Shreeshan V , Anushka Mohite Mahale , Moonis Ijlal
Carbon Copy A freshly passed amendment to the Forest Conservation Act has created a stir among ecologists, parliamentarians and stakeholders. With several contentious provisions, the amendment reveals an afforestation push where rights and justice take a backseat to commercial interests. This week, amidst a raucous monsoon session, the Indian Parliament saw the passage of several consequential pieces of legislation in quick succession. Among them was the contentious amendment to the Forest Conservation...
More »Over 3 Lakh Hectares of Forest Land Diverted for Non-Forest Use in the Last 15 Years - Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
The recently concluded Parliament session saw the passage of the highly controversial “Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023” amid wide protests and without much discussion. The bill is aimed to amend the erstwhile Forest Conservation Act, 1980. Among the changes suggested, the below preamble was inserted into the act, and the “Forest (Conservation) Act” is substituted by “Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam” in the principal Act. While the environment Ministry claims that...
More »Poverty and inequality
KEY TRENDS • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...
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