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...

-Down to Earth In 41% of the cases, communities allege that authorities or project proponents did not follow proper procedures for the takeover of land Disputes concerning commons land accounted for 75.94 per cent of all the existing and resolved land-related conflicts, according to a new report. The report titled Land Locked: Investments and Lives in Land Conflicts, released by Land Conflict Watch (LCW), a Delhi-based research agency, arrived at this conclusion after...

-The Telegraph Radhakamal Mukerjee: an ecological pioneer In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukerjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukerjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar to recognise the vital importance of common property resources...

-The Hindu It is our duty to ‘caution government’ when its policies have potential to affect the rights of tribal people, says Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes It is the duty of the commission to “caution the government” when its policies have the potential to affect the well-being and rights of tribal people, Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), told The Hindu...

-Newsclick.in The Van Gujjars are among a few surviving transhumant pastoral communities worldwide. They are a rarity in that they are one of the few Muslim Tribals who have survived as nomads to the present day. Eighty-six Families from Silan, a Van Gujjar settlement in Shivpuri Range, Tehri Garhwal, have filed their claims under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of forest rights) Act, 2006 and further submitted them...