What we need is a commons manifesto (Global warming and Indian land use change)

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 What we need is a commons manifesto (Global warming and Indian land use change)

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Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

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• Future of human civilisation : In our 2019 elections, there are many issues being debated, but no Party is willing to talk about what matters the most - the future of mankind.
• The 1.5 degree report : The October 2018 IPCC report clearly warned that without radical course correction, the world will exhaust its carbon budget to keep global temeprature rise below 1.5 degree C, by 2030. What beyond that? Runaway changes beyond mankind's control.
• Myopic versus the Big Picture : Today, we are myopically engaged in talks on GHG emissions and carbon budgets. India's focus on massive RE addition is good, but will do nothing to save normal Indians from coming climate disasters. The only solution is "resilience of the lands citizens live in".
• A false solution peddled globally : Governments and Corporations are telling us that by changing the fuels that we consume, we can change our fate. But by themselves, RE solutions won't change an unsustainable economy into a sustainable one. They may make it worse.
• What India is doing : We claimed at Katowice Poland that we'd meet our environmental goals before the deadline. And at the same time, we are diluting most of our environmental laws in favour of the corporates (and disempowering local communities).
• Various changes :

1. Changes to the Indian Forest Act, 1927 making it harsher - forest officials can shoot anyone without liability / relocate people against their will / hand over forests to pvt firms for reforestation / grab forests for carbon sequestration etc.
2. Coastal Regulation Zone Notification Feb. 2019 was diluted to allow denser construction closer to the sea along the 7500 km long Indian coastline. Mega projects can come up in mangroves, inside the sea, over dunes, tidal marshes etc. Both these are about land use change.

• Protests : Across India, various groups are protesting many projects, with a common thread - land use change prevention. These are not primarily about GHG emissions.
• Open unbuilt spaces : Agrarian and indigenous cultures respect open spaces - water bodies, grazing lands, community forests, etc. Such lands cannot be brought or sold.
• Open Earth Economies v/s Developmentalists : The first favour management and value extraction through activities that do not kill the lands. The second wants to build infrastructure and colonise lands constantly.
• Paved surfaces kill the Earth : A developed economy is built on paved surfaces - that disrupts water flows, reduces groundwater recharge, and kills biodiversity. The Chennai floods 2015 is a stark example.
• Urban flooding : The many examples globally of urban flooding (NY 2015, Europe 2016, Mumbai 2017, Japan 2018) shows how climate change will harm us if we wrongly change land use.
• The manifesto we need in India : Protect the commons and open lands, re-create economies which derive value out of healing landscapes and dense vegetations. For that, people need to speak out without fear.
• Summary : Deeper changes in land use are needed to avert a climate catastrophe.

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