Ashish Kothari

Kalpavriksh

Across the world, overwhelming evidence of the ecological unsustainability and social injustice of the current path of development has led to a range of responses. Substantial efforts have been made by various governments, corporations, and civil society towards ‘greening’ the economy, elaborating on, and attempting to adopt, principles of ‘sustain...

This chapter lays out both the critique of the oxymoron sustainable development as well as the potential and nuances of a post-development agenda. Post-development is generally meant as an era or approach in which development would no longer be the central organizing principle of social life. We highlight the contribution by Joan Martinez Alier wit...

The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controve...

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characterist...

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto (2020) has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what peopl...

This volume examines the political economy of neoliberalism in India and offers cases of resistance and alternative organizing. It departs from existing conversations that focus on the state's policies and decisions, and focuses on the violence unleashed by corporate forces. It should be of interest to anyone curious about the collapse of crucial i...

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto (2020) has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what peopl...

The universalist ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and 169 targets as a global plan of action for people, planet, prosperity and peacebuilding deserves analytical scrutiny from multiple angles. While the SDGs are largely heralded as a paradigm shift compared to their predecessor Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), we argue tha...

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds. We start by highlighting the strength...

Sans mise en cause de l’économie politique de la mondialisation, un Green New Deal ne sera qu’une vitrine occultant la poursuite de l’exploitation de la nature et du travail pour satisfaire la demande « écologique » des fractions privilégiées de l’humanité. Il faut sortir de la logique des transferts de coûts, qui fait porter sur les plus pauvres e...

The prospects for Earth’s biological diversity look increasingly bleak. The urgency of global efforts to preserve biodiversity long predates the COVID-19 crisis, but the pandemic has added new dimensions to the problem. Conservation funding from nature tourism has all but disappeared with international travel restrictions, wildlife poaching is on t...

General Secretary of India's ruling party, Bharatiya Janta Party, wrote recently that its vision is one of village self-rule (gram swaraj), and sustainable development. Sounds good. But its actual policies and practices seem to be completely opposite of this ...

While the COVID crisis is a huge humanitarian one, it is also an opportunity to rethink our economy, polity and society in fundamental ways. Learning from thousands of grassroots initiatives that are already practicing alternatives, we can move towards a more equitable, just, and sustainable world.

This case study describes and analyses a non-violent movement to save a Himalayan landscape of enormous ecological and livelihood importance, from destructive activities, in the midst of one of India’s most conflict-ridden regions. Tosamaidan comprises a series of high-altitude grassland-mountain ecosystems in the Pir Panjal range of the Himalaya,...

Globally there is a visible counter-trend to the destructive process of ‘development’ that the forces of capitalism, statism, patriarchy have imposed. Though still marginal and not yet able to make significant macro-level transformations, the resistance is growing. As is, often emerging from such resistance, there is a re-assertion of ways of life...

About an anarchic living experiment in Copenhagen, Denmark called Christiania.

The article argues for the Rights of Rivers in the 2019 election agendas in India!

The process of Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) in India involves visioning of an ideal built on grounded initiatives, spanning the full range of alternative approaches to justice, equity, and sustainability. The focus is on India, but the lessons and visions emerging are relevant globally. It attempts to document, network, and create collab...

Christiania, an “experiment” at self-governed community living spread over 85 acres near Copenhagen, is a thriving alternative to a capitalist or statist society, a reminder that another world is possible.

On Marx's 200th and Gandhi's 150th birth anniversaries, it is crucial to ask how their legacies are relevant today, and how in using these, grassroots movements do not build ideological walls between the two but use whatever they find relevant and inspirational.

When a government justifies environmental ‘sacrifice’ for ‘development’ purposes, it is not answering: whose development, at whose cost? An assessment of the devastating ecological and social cost of the BJP govt's 4 years of rule.

35 essays on the future of India, written by experts in each field, from politics to economics to socio-cultural issues to ecological ones. Each essay has two bottom lines: the need for social justice/equity, and the imperative of ecological sustainability. We are making the full book downloadable for free, a year after its publication.

Introduction to volume 2 of Review of Environment and Development in Economic and Political Weekly.

https://www.epw.in/review-environment-and-development

Sustainable agriculture, farmer producer company, women's empowerment, alternative education, and other exciting initiatives are part of the Timbaktu Collective's work in one of India's driest and poorest regions, in Andhra Pradesh.

The Dongria Kondh indigenous people of south-eastern India have resisted mining proposals in their forested hills, for spiritual, livelihood, and other reasons. Implicit in their struggle for survival against external threats is the assertion of a different way of life and worldview, challenging today's notion of 'development' for well-being. This...

A transformation to sustainability calls for radical and systemic societal shifts. Yet what this entails in practice and who the agents of this radical transformation are require further elaboration. This article recenters the role of environmental justice movements in transformations, arguing that the systemic, multi-dimensional and intersectional...

The draft Forest Policy of the Indian government is regressive, attempting to privatise forests and forest lands, rather than empower communities to conserve, regenerate, and sustainably use forests for livelihoods. Both this and development policies need to put local communities at the centre of decision-making, and build ecological wisdom and sus...

"Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary" is a stimulating collection of over 100 essays on transformative alternatives to the currently dominant processes of globalized development, including its structural roots in modernity, capitalism, state domination, and masculinist values. In the post-development imagination, 'development' would no long...

The recent massive farmer protests have shown up the hollowness of India's 'development' model, which has exacerbated inequalities, caused huge ecological destruction, under the myth that the only way to progress is to leave behind agriculture and completely industrialise and urbanise.

A remarkable, first-ever collection of 35 essays on India's future, by a diverse set of authors-activists, researchers, media practitioners, those who have influenced policies and those working at the grassroots. This book brings together scenarios of an India that is politically and socially egalitarian, radically democratic, economically sustaina...

There’s much that makes us feel despondent in the contemporary world – climate change, economic inequality, social discord and a sense of intense personal ennui. How do we move towards solutions which restore sanity to our existence and connect us to others in our communities and to nature. Here’s an attempt at documenting some of the serious effor...

A dialogue on current global crises, their structural roots, and the radical alternatives that show us ways out.

As per the recent ruling of the Uttarakhand High Court, the Ganga and Yamuna rivers have rights as a "juristic/legal person/living entity." It raises a complex set of questions. What does it mean for a river, and its associated natural elements, to have rights? What does it mean for them to have rights as a "person?" How would such rights be implem...

The threatened displacement of over 200,000 people by Sardar Sarovar (Narmada) dam in central India is a tragedy of huge human dimension. Resistance continues, and the mood is defiant.

This article lays out both a critique of the oxymoron ‘sustainable development’, and the potential and nuances of a Post-Development agenda. We present ecological swaraj from India and Degrowth from Europe as two examples of alternatives to development. This gives a hint of the forthcoming book, provisionally titled The Post-Development Dictionary,...

Introduces a special issue of the EPW with a wide-ranging review of environment and development conflicts and complementarities in contemporary India.

Three responses are needed to actions such as USA President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord: widespread boycott of American industries and products, sustained public mobilisation on climate actions and recognition that Trump only represents a deep-rooted system of exploitation, and spread of radical alternative pathways to human an...

The rivers Ganga and Yamuna in India, and Whanganui in New Zealand, were accorded rights as living entities, both in mid-March, the first by a law court and the second as an agreement between the government and the indigenous Maori (Iwi) people. What do such rights mean? How can a river enforce them? These and other complex issues are briefly addre...

As India reels from the unprecedented 'demonetisation' that its government has imposed, it is time to look at initiatives by collectives in Europe and elsewhere, promoting local currencies or non-monetary exchange to rebuild local economies, democracy, and social relationships.

Across India and the rest of the world, communities and movements are searching for alternatives to the currently destructive and inequitable process of development. This essay reviews a process in India of documenting and bringing together such alternatives, and evolving a bottom-up vision of the future, with ecological, political, economic, socia...

Economic development and modernity have transformed livelihoods into deadlihoods. They are wiping out millennia-old livelihoods that were ways of life, with no sharp division between work and leisure; and replacing them with dreary assembly line jobs where we wait desperately for weekends and holidays. But there are radical alternatives, where dign...

As mainstream agriculture creates greater ecological disasters and marginalises small farmers, several communities in India are finding innovative ways of sustainable, ecologically sound farming leading to food sovereignty.

As part of the search for alternatives to the unsustainable and inequitable form of globalised development prevalent today, one framework emerging is ecoswaraj or radical ecological democracy, as demonstrated by myriad grassroots initiatives and conceptual churning taking place in India.

This article proposes that the 'Green Economy' is not an adequate response to the unsustainability and inequity created by 'development' (a western cultural construct), and puts forward alternative socio-environmental futures to (and not of) development. 'Sustainable development' is an oxymoron. Therefore, instead of the 'post-2015 development agen...

The Sustainable Development Goals agenda 2030 has many positive elements, but is fatally flawed on a number of counts; to achieve sustainability, equity and justice, radical well-being alternatives need to be explored.

The document, Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , was negotiated over several months of intense discussions amongst government delegates from every country. It also involved extensive consultations with the public. It lays out 17 goals and 169 targets, covering poverty, health, education, gender, water and sanitati...

India announced its climate intentions in early October; they sound ambitious for a so-called 'developing' country, but they are deeply flawed.

India's climate commitment (INDC) is deeply flawed, with dangerous nuclear energy, big hydropower, and continued reliance on unsustainable development and growth, apart from continued unreliability of access to the poor

Pope Francis' Encyclical on environment and development is a trenchant critique of humanity's treatment of the earth, and has many strong recommendations for moving us towards sustainability and justice; but it falls short of being revolutionary.

As the world moves towards a deal on sustainable development and perhaps a deal on climate, there is a need to understand and promote fundamentally transformative approaches to well-being rather than 'green economy' kind of short-term solutions; many such approaches exist around the world.

Pope Francis' Encyclical is a strong indictment of humanity's treatment of the earth, and a plea for ecological sanity as also social ethics relating to poverty and deprivation; but it falls short of being, by itself, a big game-changer.

A community-run tourism enterprise that is serious about the 'eco' in ecotourism, and about reaching benefits to local communities.

Communities in many parts of India are conserving birds, for a variety of reasons; some are ancient practices, some very new. The presentation gives a few examples, and draws some broad lessons for extending such conservation elsewhere.

Communities in many parts of India are conserving birds, for a variety of reasons; some are ancient practices, some very new. The presentation gives a few examples, and draws some broad lessons for extending such conservation elsewhere.

Communities in many parts of India are conserving birds, for a variety of reasons; some are ancient practices, some very new. The presentation gives a few examples, and draws some broad lessons for extending such conservation elsewhere.

Communities in many parts of India are conserving birds, for a variety of reasons; some are ancient practices, some very new. The presentation gives a few examples, and draws some broad lessons for extending such conservation elsewhere.

Having won a famous victory against mining plans by the multinational corporation Vedanta, the indigenous Dongaria Kondh of Odisha, India, face threats from inappropriate 'welfare' schemes of the government and NGOs, including education.

The Earth is a dynamic planet with a remarkable geodiversity. The continental masses and oceans on the surface of the Earth have changed continuously over much of geological time. Oceans have opened and closed, and continents have fragmented and collided, accompanied by plutonic igneous activity, volcanism and large-scale crustal deformation. Earth...

Can a diversity of governance forms, with a focus on indigenous peoples' and local community empowerment and decision-making, lead to enhanced conservation and human well-being across landscapes? Lead presentation for a session on 'Better Governed Landscape as Models for Sustainable and Equitable Well-being'.

Indigenous Peoples' and Community Conserved Territories and Areas (ICCAs) extend over substantial parts of the earth, equalling or perhaps surpassing officially designated protected areas (though poorly documented), and encompassing crucial ecological, cultural, social, and economic values. They are therefore prime candidates to be 'no-go' areas fo...

In 2010, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Aichi Biodiversity Targets as part of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020. Target 11 calls for 'at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas' to be conserved by way of 'well-connected syste...

The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-20, framed by Parties to the CBD at the 10 th Conference of Parties in 2010, outlines an ambitious roadmap towards halting and reversing biodiversity loss across the planet. While clearly not a replacement for the Convention, which is a mix of policy, goals, strategies, actions, and guidance, the Strategic P...

In a powerful challenge to the unsustainable and inequitable model of ‘development’ that is currently dominant, myriad initiatives to achieve alternative modes of governance, production, distribution, and consumption, have sprung up in many parts of the world. The South Asian region is a strong locus of such initiatives, and one of the frameworks e...

Growing evidence of the ecological unsustainability and iniquitous nature of the current economic development model is prompting a search for alternatives. While various approaches to ‘green’ the economy are being suggested, these are often managerial or technofix-dependent, without fundamentally challenging the political, economic, and social stru...

The search for alternatives to the currently dominant, unsustainable and inequitable model of 'development' should take us to the myriad grassroots and conceptual initiatives that are taking place around the world, pointing to a combination of radical (direct) democracy, an economics mindful of ecological limits and focusing on localisation, people...

Until recently, conventional conservation paradigm and approach in India has been about establishment of a network of Protected Areas and policing them through undemocratic and top-down laws, policies and practice. Some recent changes in legislation, particularly the Wildlife Act and the passing of the Forest Rights Act, can potentially bring signi...

This chapter describes sacred spaces, protected populations of species, catchment and reserve resource forests, village wetlands, grasslands, institutional dynamics of the conservational efforts, and recommendations for conservation of ecosystems and wildlife in Rajasthan. The last few decades have seen considerable decimation by modern hunting and...