EU supported project to “bring back forests on forest land”: Auroville bioregion – Tamil Nadu

    01 April 2002 | by Isha; source: Auroville Today, April 2002   European Union supports Auroville’s afforestation project. The planting of 75,000 trees within Auroville, fortifying Auroville’s forest gene and bunding and check dam work needed to combat soil erosion and enhance groundwater percolation are going to be the main components of the … Read more

Video | Learning from one another: An international exchange programme “for a new future for the Ainu people” – Japan

In January 2012, a Maori leader, Te Ururoa Flavell visited Ainumosir (Hokkaido) and Tokyo and witnessed the work Ainu people are doing in their communities to revitalize their culture, language, and rights. He immediately suggested that Ainu youth come to Aoteroa (New Zealand) to see how Maori community members have been working to ensure cultural … Read more

Ensuring continued access to Indian medicine poorer sections of Indian society – Traditional Knowledge And World Intellectual Property Law

Jennifer Anne BlaylockRina Elster PantalonyCopyright, Legal Issues and Policy H72.1804December 16, 2008 Traditional Knowledge And World Intellectual Property Law […] TK [Traditional Knowledge] policies ideally benefit indigenous populations by protecting their specialized knowledge from exploitation by third parties. However, TK can be protected and monetized in ways that are detrimental to the original TK. Maarten Bode … Read more

Machu Picchu: UNESCO World Heritage site close to some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes – Peru

In 2007, Machu Picchu was declared one of the seven new wonders of the world. Today, the lives of uncontacted tribes in the same valley are threatened by gas and oil extraction. […] Every year, nearly 1 million tourists visit the Inca citadel. Perched high on a ridge in the eastern Andes overlooking the Urubamba … Read more

Tribal languages face extinction as “young people want to be part of the mainstream culture” – Uttarakhand

Excerpts from The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sunday , July 25 , 2010Death of a languageJad, a tribal language in Uttarakhand, is slowly going extinct. Hemchhaya Detravels to the tribe’s remote habitat and explains how many native languages around the world are dwindling under the onslaught of globalisationNarayan Singh Negi, leader of the Rong Ba tribe, in the … Read more