Category Archives: Ecology and environment

“As we are looking for ways of sustainable development, these [tribal] groups can teach us lessons in sustainable development.” – M. Venkaiah Naidu (Vice President of India) in the First Foundation Day Lecture of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) titled “Constitution and Tribes” (Press Information Bureau, 19 February 2019)
https://ncst.nic.in/sites/default/files/2019/Media/2.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=36256

“Nature is a reward in itself. It is there, to be understood, to be lived and loved. And in its way it gives us everything – the bounty and goodness of the earth, the sea, the sky. Food, water, the air we breathe. All the things we take for granted. […] Nature gives. And takes away. And gives again.” – Ruskin Bond in The Book of Nature
https://penguin.co.in/book/the-book-of-nature/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=5036

“We are on borrowed time, because we are not looking after our soil properly’. You can call it neo-liberalisation, corporatisation, fertilising or short-sighted irrigation policy, but, ultimately what is happening is that the soil is losing all its nourishment. Any civilisation that doesn’t understand this basic truth is going to face the grave danger of just not being able to survive any more. The day after this conversation, we were at a meeting in Jalgaon and there experts were talking about greater productivity through more chemicals into the soil and how we needed to increase the number of crops we grow. What they do not understand is that only four companies dominate 75 per cent of the global trade in grains and only 17 plant species (out of 3,00,000) are providing the human race 90 per cent of its food.” – Playwright Ramu Ramanathan interviewed by Dipanita Nath in “I know people who have chosen to be silent, some out of fear and others just out of being deadened” (Indian Express, 28 October 2020)
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/i-know-people-who-have-chosen-to-be-silent-some-out-of-fear-and-others-just-out-of-being-deadened-6902500/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=5576

“Movements of farmers and farm labourers […] are headed for serious trouble if they do not factor in the problems of climate change (which have already devastated agriculture in India); if they do not locate themselves in, and link their battles to, an agroecological approach.” – P. Sainath in “We Didn’t Bleed Him Enough”: When Normal is the Problem (counterpunch.org , 12 August 2020, first published in Frontline magazine)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/12/we-didnt-bleed-him-enough-when-normal-is-the-problem/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=20419

“It is no coincidence that where healthy Fourth World [Indigenous] nations live and prosper based on their freely chosen political, cultural, economic and social way of life the living Earth also thrives. Thus, it is no surprise that Fourth World nations occupy 80% of the world’s remaining biodiverse rainforests, plains, tundra, mountain regions, estuaries, rivers and streams, and deserts.” – Rudolph C. Rÿser (Founder, Center for World Indigenous Studies) in Biodiversity Wars: Coexistence or Biocultural Collapse in the 21st Century (2020), Chapter 1 “Original Peoples”
https://www.cwis.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Chapter-1_Biodiversity-Wars.pdf
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=37546

“Indians are truly rooted in an ethos of living in harmony with their land. There was a time when the Indian subcontinent was carpeted in green… watered by glacial rivers, blessed by rolling hills and productive grasslands, lush rainforests and wave-kissed mangroves. All creatures, great and small, found niches here and thrived. Varied cultures were spawned and people in awe of nature lived by its rules. This happy situation has changed. The wondrous green has long-disappeared – plundered and looted first by invaders and colonists and then by those who took freedom as license to outdo the colonisers in the plunder of natural India. Today what little remains is being systematically eroded by a population caught in the crossroads of a development paradigm borrowed from the industrial North that systematically devastated colonies for centuries.” – Lakshmy Raman and Bittu Sahgal in “Daft National Policy 2018” (Sanctuary Nature Foundation)
https://sanctuarynaturefoundation.org/article/daft-national-policy-2018
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=17557

“In general, the sustainability, productivity, resilience and stability of socio-ecological ecosystems usually found in indigenous and rural communities are dependent on the cultural values exhibited by its indigenous peoples. […] The [formerly semi-nomadic hill tribe known as the ‘Kaani’] are an ethnic group with their own unique social institutions and organizations with self-rule, who prioritised harmonious relationships with their ecology through cultural and religious observations and beliefs.” – Danesto B. Anacio & Davidson Sargunam in a UNESCO report, “Knowing our Lands and Resources: Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Practices related to Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Asia” (Knowledges of Nature 10.: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Paris 2017)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=24265

“We are currently facing a crisis that threatens not only the survival of our civilisation and humans as a species, but that of life on our planet as a whole. […] ‘Buen vivir’ provides a unique opportunity to devise new ways of living collectively” – Mateo Martínez Abarca in “The Climate Crisis: South African and Global Democratic Eco-Socialist Alternatives (2018)
https://www.academia.edu/38962736/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=28966

“We can do things differently to reinvent growth without pollution. But only if we have the courage to think differently.” – Sunita Narain in “India’s twin environmental challenges” (Down To Earth, 15 December 2013)
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/indias-twin-environmental-challenges-42835
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=13490