A school with an ecological curriculum

Villagers one up on government in greening project

THREE YEARS after the National Wasteland Development Board (NWDB) launched the "Greening the Himalaya" project in the Jadhera panchayat of Himachal Pradesh, the balding hills of the panchayat are turning green once more.

Feed it to the earthworm

EARTHWORMS may hold the key to the problem of disposing urban waste. For the last 18 months, Lata Srikhande, honorary secretary of the Save Pune Citizen's Society, has been disposing of all her domestic organic waste, from banana peels to egg shells, in her roof-top garden which is rich in earthworms.

Community welfare works as a contraceptive

DESPITE resistance from his country's religious leaders, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, is going ahead with plans to implement a comprehensive family planning strategy. And this is being done through Pasbaan, the social development wing of the Family Planning Association of Pakistan (FPAP).

From reservations to recognition

THE FIRST World has just discovered the relationship between environment and indigenous people. This is the primary reason for putting indigenous people on the environmental agenda. They have realised that if the world's rainforests are in danger so are the forest's inhabitants. "If they go, so do the forests," says pop singer Sting, on behalf of the Rainforest Foundation.

Weaving a common destiny

A visit to Kabir Basti, 60 km from Jaisalmer, reveals an affluent village of about 70 households. Every house is a pucca structure, made of the local yellow granite and arranged in neat, well-planned rows, with plenty of space in between. The children are healthy, the village has its own drinking water wells, gram sabha (village assembly) building and high school.

Planting trees instead of feeding brahmins

PURI HAS an NGO with a difference. Residents of 1,200 villages in the district have got together to form the Brukshya O Jeevara Bandhu Parishad (BOJBP) to protect their environment and devised quaint methods for ecological regeneration. Seedlings are demanded as part of dowry and planting trees, instead of feeding Brahmins, have become a part of death ceremonies.

Cracking down on eco-crime

SINCE 1989, the state of New Jersey in USA has issued US $5 million worth of fines and handed prison sentences amounting to 165 years for environmental crimes. It could do this thanks to the Green Police, New Jersey's answer to the growing menace of indiscriminate toxic waste disposal.

More miles to go for Chipko women

TWENTY years after the women of UP's Chamoli district hugged trees to save them from contractors' axes, the echoes of the call "Chipko" still ring in the district's hills. With new challenges to be met, the women's fight to preserve the Himalayan ecology continues. The Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal, which under Chandi Prasad Bhatt's leadership was in the forefront of the Chipko movement, is today trying to generate ecologically sustainable development

Where a community maps its resources

MAPPING of local natural resources by the villagers is an experiment being tried out by three Kerala organisations: the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) and the Kerala State Land Use Board (KSLUB). Economic growth is unsustainable unless the exploitation of