Blogs

Edited by Prof. Ruth DeFries (NCCI) Earth Focus recently hosted the second Millet-focused roundtable, organized by the Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI), over 16th and 17th January 2024. The roundtable brought together people from several civil society organizations, farmer producer organizations, women self-help groups and other stakeholders to address challenges for advancing the millet […]

Conversations with entomologist and education intern, Shikha Nain Kanha wears the monsoon beautifully. Everything seems to shimmer here – the stars, the fireflies, the mica-infused dirt. Shikha and I notice this as we walk across campus late in the evening. She is pulling me aside one second to save me from a black scorpion, stopping […]

The Jawahar Model of Farming is an innovative and cost-effective method that has the potential to double the income of small farmers with reduced inputs. Farmers in central India are feeling the need to work harder. Factors such as the depletion of necessary resources due to climate change and lower income levels force them to […]

Curricula can be infused with scientific and technical know-how alongside indigenous and local knowledge. The cross-cutting imperative should be to foster critical thinking instead of rote learning so that the next generation can embrace complexity and make informed choices. Instead of mirroring a broken development paradigm predicated on an extractive relationship with nature, India can […]

 A Case Study of Vangrams in Kanha National Park. Introduction Between 1968 and 2010, thousands of Gond and Baiga tribal families residing in Madhya Pradesh’s Kanha National Park were moved out of their villages in an effort to conserve the critical tiger habitat. These tribal communities, left without access to life-giving forest resources and offered […]

Investigating lessons from a lac cultivation pilot in the Baiga village of Chichrangpur The lakshagriha (or “house of lac”) of the Mahabharata was a palace built from lac in the forest village of Varnavrata. It was conceived as a scheme by Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, to murder his rival cousins, the Pandavas, in their sleep. […]

There is much to learn from how their relationship with natural resources is regulated by natural rhythms and cycles. India’s varied forest habitat is a giant tinderbox that can release vast amounts of carbon dioxide, imperilling lives and livelihoods. But, if safeguarded and thoughtfully expanded, these very forests could be vital in slowing down the […]