A legacy of balance
4 months, 3 weeks ago

A legacy of balance

New Indian Express  

BENGALURU: In his latest book, Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, historian Ramachandra Guha takes readers on a journey through India’s environmental past – a legacy that few are familiar with. Through their lives and writings, these figures – ranging from the poet Rabindranath Tagore to the economist J C Kumarappa – anticipated the environmental challenges we face today and crafted a vision of coexistence that Guha calls ‘livelihood environmentalism.’ This form of environmentalism, Guha argues, is not born out of luxury. “In the environmental movement, both in India and abroad, there’s a trend where people focus only on beautiful landscapes or endangered species that need to be protected, which I’d call ‘speaking for nature’,” Guha observes. “Each of these ‘thinkers’ came from a varied professional background: several were writers, a few were social activists within the Gandhian tradition, at least three were scientists, and one was a naturalist,” says Guha.

Guha Indian Environmentalism  speaking  balance  landscapes  indian  environmentalism  environmental  need  species  guha  nature  legacy  thinkers

History of this topic

BOOK REVIEW | The Genesis of Indian Environmentalism in Ramachandra Guha’s “Speaking with Nature”
2 months, 2 weeks ago

BOOK REVIEW | The Genesis of Indian Environmentalism in Ramachandra Guha’s “Speaking with Nature”

The Hindu  

Published : Jan 13, 2025 20:58 IST - 6 MINS READ Tagore was one of the founders of Indian environmentalism,” Ram Guha told me, when I had finally managed to grab a seat near him and start a conversation. I waited keenly to read Speaking with Nature, a book described by Guha as a “group portrait” of 10 nation-shapers who …

Echoes of nature: Frontline’s top 12 environment stories of 2024
3 months, 2 weeks ago

Echoes of nature: Frontline’s top 12 environment stories of 2024

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 17, 2024 18:01 IST - 1 MIN READ Arguably one of the most disturbing headlines from the world of environment came when we rang in the New Year. In January 2024, from a pristine little island in the Indian Ocean, the Great Nicobar Island, author Pankaj Sekhsaria reported on the unimaginable havoc a proposed Rs.72,000 crore infrastructure …

Speak with Nature, Not Just for Nature: Guha Advises at Vidyaranga High Event
4 months ago

Speak with Nature, Not Just for Nature: Guha Advises at Vidyaranga High Event

Deccan Chronicle  

Hyderabad: Historian and environmental thinker Ramachandra Guha inspired citizens to 'speak with nature' and not just 'for nature' at a talk and book-signing event at Vidyaranga High School on Friday. Providing a brief of his book, Guha said, "Chipko movement combined a concern for environmental conservation with an equally abiding concern for community rights and social justice. A large number …

Review of Ramachandra Guha’s Speaking With Nature: Under the banyan tree
4 months, 2 weeks ago

Review of Ramachandra Guha’s Speaking With Nature: Under the banyan tree

The Hindu  

Environmentalism isn’t just an idea; it’s also a verb. In his latest book, Speaking With Nature, historian Ramachandra Guha draws portraits of ten people who he credits with laying the foundation of environmentalism in India. Links with social thought Guha continues the questions he has asked in previous writings, in that he descries ‘full-stomach environmentalism’ — the Western idea that …

A legacy of balance
4 months, 3 weeks ago

A legacy of balance

New Indian Express  

CHENNAI: In his latest book, Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, historian Ramachandra Guha takes readers on a journey through India’s environmental past — a legacy that few are familiar with. “In the environmental movement, both in India and abroad, there’s a trend where people focus only on beautiful landscapes or endangered species that need to be protected, …

The Enduring Legacy of Gandhi's Environmental Philosophy: A Journey Through India's Enduring Environmentalism
Trending News
4 months, 4 weeks ago

The Enduring Legacy of Gandhi's Environmental Philosophy: A Journey Through India's Enduring Environmentalism

ABP News  

Ramachandra Guha's 'Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism' is a nuanced exploration of India's environmental consciousness and its evolution. Guha examines 10 influential thinkers who predated global environmental movements and argues that India's environmentalism has developed its own trajectory shaped by sublime ecological, social, and cultural contexts. The book highlights the importance of livelihood environmentalism, a matter of …

Early Environmental Thinkers of India: A Journey Through History and Activism
4 months, 4 weeks ago

Early Environmental Thinkers of India: A Journey Through History and Activism

The Hindu  

The article highlights the importance of practical resource management and grassroots movements in shaping environmentalism in India. It features 10 individuals whose work spans from the 1880s to the 1990s, emphasizing the importance of forest, soil, and water conservation for sustaining village life and agriculture. The book also features contributions from Rabindranath Tagore and K.M.Munshi, who were deeply involved in …

Embracing Nature's Positivity: A Call to Action for a Sustainable Future
5 months, 1 week ago

Embracing Nature's Positivity: A Call to Action for a Sustainable Future

Times of India  

The article emphasizes the urgency of embracing nature positivity alongside net-zero goals. It highlights the interconnectedness of biodiversity and climate action, emphasizing the need to address both issues together. The article outlines the outcomes of the COP15 summit, including the 23 targets for biodiversity conservation by 2030, which are a vision for a world where nature and humanity coexist harmoniously. …

Improving the language of biodiversity conservation
9 months, 3 weeks ago

Improving the language of biodiversity conservation

The Hindu  

In the midst of a climate emergency, we mark another World Environment Day on Wednesday. Climate links have bolstered biodiversity’s societal values, since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessments that emphasised ecosystem services including carbon sequestration. They wrote that conservation will “remain elusive until there is a clear demonstration of the relevance of biodiversity to people’s well-being.“ Further, “the link between biodiversity …

World Environment Day: Arati Kumar-Rao wants you to listen to the land
1 year, 9 months ago

World Environment Day: Arati Kumar-Rao wants you to listen to the land

Live Mint  

There is an interesting anecdote from Arati Kumar-Rao’s new book, Marginlands: Indian Landscapes On The Brink, which best describes the beauty of India’s vast natural landscapes and the urgency to rescue them from the precipice of destruction. The people of the Thar get only forty cloudy days in a year, and yet they have as many names for clouds.” Many …

Book Review | Bouquet of surprises bound to change your outlook on conservation
2 years ago

Book Review | Bouquet of surprises bound to change your outlook on conservation

Deccan Chronicle  

How well named is this book? The first essay itself takes you to the core of the problem: how wildlife research cannot be independent of conservation and how conservation cannot be limited to one species. Although the story of the hungry hordes of green sea turtles chomping destructively through the seagrass meadows of five atolls in the Indian Ocean brings …

India's Tribal Land: Can Both Development & Conservation Be Andaman's Priority?
2 years, 1 month ago

India's Tribal Land: Can Both Development & Conservation Be Andaman's Priority?

The Quint  

Andaman & Nicobar has certain peculiarities eg, six indigenous tribes and native only to these distant Islands, a reserved/protected forest cover of 94%, abundance of flora and fauna, unmodernised economy with tourism and fishing as mainstay and in desperate need for additional investments for socio-economic uplift. How do you leverage its unmatched geographical and strategic potential hosting the only ‘Chinese …

HT Picks; New Reads
2 years, 6 months ago

HT Picks; New Reads

Hindustan Times  

The Rise of a Superpower A book on how China was transformed into the world superpower it is today, another that narrates the last books of the Mahabharata, and a volume in which Nature Conservation Foundation scientists talk about their remarkable work. In charting four decades of so-called “Reform and Opening Up” and China’s emergence as a world power, Dikötter …

Most important cultural resource India needs to protect is its pluralism: Gopalkrishna Gandhi
2 years, 6 months ago

Most important cultural resource India needs to protect is its pluralism: Gopalkrishna Gandhi

The Hindu  

The most important cultural resource that India has to protect, foster and offer to the world is its legacy of pluralism, belief in all its multiple faith and traditions, Gopalkrishna Gandhi has said, cautioning that he fears this may be squandered by “sheer default and neglect.” Mr. Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, was in conversation with economist Swaminathan Aiyar …

Don’t be oblivious of our natural heritage
2 years, 10 months ago

Don’t be oblivious of our natural heritage

Hindustan Times  

Last Sunday, along with three friends, I went on a field trip to Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. Singh also showed us camera-trap images of the Asiatic wild cat, also known as Indian desert cat, leopard, civet, sloth bear, sambar deer, porcupines, and jackals from a recent survey by Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working towards establishing …

RGNUL: International Interdisciplinary Conference On "Literature, Environment And Climate Change" [7-8 April 2022]
3 years, 2 months ago

RGNUL: International Interdisciplinary Conference On "Literature, Environment And Climate Change" [7-8 April 2022]

Live Law  

The Department of English and Public Relations, Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab is organising an international interdisciplinary conference in collaboration with Punjab Pollution Control Board, Patiala; Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, New Delhi and Assam Don Bosco University on "Literature, Environment and Climate Change".The conference will be held on hybrid mode. Research Papers from Academicians, Professionals and Research Scholars across …

Ignoring the environment is bad economics
4 years, 2 months ago

Ignoring the environment is bad economics

Live Mint  

In hindsight, India’s tryst with liberalization came only a few years after a pivotal but increasingly forgotten moment in the world’s environmental history, the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984. It developed a feeble framework to protect ecology and people; environment remained a mutable variable of India’s economic policy, appended to its corporate growth. Our deteriorating environment—abysmal air quality, toxin-laden water, …

Book review: Urgent need for conservation action to save India’s habitats
4 years, 3 months ago

Book review: Urgent need for conservation action to save India’s habitats

The Hindu  

T HE very first photograph in the book has you hooked. The caption lends further weight to the visual: “Occupying just 2.4% of the earth’s total land area and harbouring 7% of the world’s flora and 6.5% of the world’s fauna, India ranks among the world’s 17 most mega-diverse countries and has ecosystems representing practically every biome of the world.” …

Pay heed to the voice of David Attenborough, writes Mark Tully
4 years, 6 months ago

Pay heed to the voice of David Attenborough, writes Mark Tully

Hindustan Times  

Last week, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the renowned naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough “the voice of nature” while presenting him the Indira Gandhi Award for Peace, Disarmament and Development. Attenborough said it was up to us, the voters, to make it clear that we want politicians to act to avoid the major crisis he fears we are …

India’s Experiments in Saving Nature by Bahar Dutt
5 years, 2 months ago

India’s Experiments in Saving Nature by Bahar Dutt

Hindustan Times  

223 pp, Rs750; Oxford University Press, The United Nations had marked the years 2011 to 2020 as the ‘decade of biodiversity’. Two landmark scientific reports – The WWF Living Planet Report 2018 and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 2019 -- point to the mass extinction of species or the unprecedented loss of biodiversity and the degradation …

Conservation minus the people?
5 years, 10 months ago

Conservation minus the people?

The Hindu  

In February this year, one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries issued a court order which stood to evict more than a million forest-dwelling people from their homes. This was affirmed by the 1980 World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the Earth Summit’s 1992 Statement of Forest Principles and the Convention on Biological Diversity. …

India’s ecological hotspots are on a slow-ticking time bomb
6 years, 7 months ago

India’s ecological hotspots are on a slow-ticking time bomb

Live Mint  

Bengaluru/New Delhi: Every large-scale tragedy in India has often left behind more questions than answers. Photo: Supriya Aggarwal The 2011 report by The Western Ghats Ecology Panel, headed by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, described the Western Ghats as the “water tower” of peninsular India; a biodiversity treasure trove; and the backbone of south India’s ecology and economy. “In the Western Ghats, …

Sustaining earth for the future
6 years, 9 months ago

Sustaining earth for the future

The Hindu  

Life is a unique asset of our planet. We have the digital tools and artificial intelligence today to efficiently catalogue, map, and monitor life’s fabric in a manner never before attempted — and with the potential engagement of millions of students and citizens. This mapping effort would include not only all life, including cultures, ethnicities, and dialects, but also the …

When Cities Were Nature’s Havens: A Brief History of Bangalore
7 years, 4 months ago

When Cities Were Nature’s Havens: A Brief History of Bangalore

The Quint  

We tend to think that nature and cities are polar opposites. As my research on Bangalore or Bengaluru – India’s IT hub – shows, for centuries, the population of this region grew because of nature, not despite it. In my book Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future, I take a deep dive into the ecological …

When Cities Were Nature’s Havens: A Brief History of Bangalore
7 years, 4 months ago

When Cities Were Nature’s Havens: A Brief History of Bangalore

The Quint  

We tend to think that nature and cities are polar opposites. As my research on Bangalore or Bengaluru – India’s IT hub – shows, for centuries, the population of this region grew because of nature, not despite it. In my book Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future, I take a deep dive into the ecological …

Book Review 'Indira Gandhi, a life in Nature: How Indira saved Chennai's lung space'
7 years, 8 months ago

Book Review 'Indira Gandhi, a life in Nature: How Indira saved Chennai's lung space'

Deccan Chronicle  

Chennai: In the early 1970s’ Chennai’s lung space encircling the Raj Bhavan complex, widely known as the Guindy deer park, was in danger of being lost to political symbolism and the increasing pressure on urban land for what was being developed as an ‘Institutional Area’ locating a whole array of scientific and technology institutions. Shah, seeking his help in “securing …

World Environment Day: Five Indian families who dedicated their lives to Mother Nature
7 years, 9 months ago

World Environment Day: Five Indian families who dedicated their lives to Mother Nature

Firstpost  

On this World Environment Day, we look at a few Indian individuals and families who have done their part in making this world a better place. Dr. Prakash Amte and Dr. Mandakini Amte, Maharashtra Another husband wife duo, Dr. Prakash Amte and his wife Dr. Mandakini Amte set up an animal shelter, called The Animal Ark, at Gadhchiroli, Maharashtra in …

Taking care of India’s rich biodiversity
11 years, 2 months ago

Taking care of India’s rich biodiversity

The Hindu  

For noted environmentalist Alka Tomar, the need to preserve the country’s biodiversity is of utmost importance. As the director of CMS Vatavaran, Environment and Wildlife Film Festival, Ms. Tomar said this year “Mainstreaming Biodiversity Conservation” has been chosen as the theme because India is home to rich and diverse biodiversity which is being threatened by rampant industrialisation and population explosion. …

An activist-environmentalist
23 years, 2 months ago

An activist-environmentalist

The Hindu  

THE death of Anil Agarwal at the age of 54 on January 2, 2002 is a loss to the environmental movement in India. After documenting the state of India's forests, rivers, cities and industries, Agarwal argued here for holistic management of land and water resources in the country. The shift in Agarwal's political activism towards closer collaboration with the state …

Discover Related