EcoUniv Weekend Reads # 12
1 May 2020
Farming: How to grow 26 types of veggies in a 60 sq ft space.
Here’s How This Kerala Engineer Grows 26 Types of Veggies In Just 60 Sq Ft Space!
Bats: They carry coronaviruses. They are mysterious. We have discovered only 25% of their species.
Ecosystems: Succulent Karoo, a desert in S. Africa, has “6,300 plant species — thousands of which are found nowhere else on Earth…including a third of the world’s succulent species”
Economics: Three articles which pose questions relevant during today’s civilization-scale pause: 1. Can we go back to a circular, sustainable, bottom-up, local-first economy after Coronavirus or do we want to go back to the same old economy and be it’s victims? 2. The plans that the city of Amsterdam has for a _Doughnut Economy_ and 3. An article which appeals that Post-COVID economy and governance for India must be bottom-up, not top-down
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/amsterdam-doughnut-model-mend-post-coronavirus-economy
EcoUniv Weekend Reads # 13
10 May 2020
Industry: Read about the many environmental impacts of the global apparel industry, particularly ‘fast fashion’, and the _greenwashing_ done by brands to show they are working on ‘sustainable ideas’.
Research – Climate Change: A new paper projects that “depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 years, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 years”.
History indicates that the ‘have’s adapt to such catastrophic changes, but the ‘have not’s may get wiped out.
Research – Species: Genomic Analysis of lions makes the lions’ family tree clearer.
Species – Bats: A bat expert talks about “societal behaviour, human prejudice amid increasing vilification of bats for novel coronavirus”.
Environmental Education: A 2014 Marathi essay by me, originally published in Shikshanvedh magazine, which delves on the holistic point of view and environmental education rooted in such a holistic viewpoint.
पर्यावरण शिक्षण : आमुलाग्र बदलाची गरज
EcoUniv Weekend Reads # 14
17 May 2020
’Development’ in Western Ghats: The story of a road being widened through Western Ghats and another about a rail link between Karnataka and Goa. It tells us all that is wrong with our environmental governance.
Research: According to a recent paper in Lancent Planetary Health, the number of lives saved (due to zero air pollution) during the recent lockdown in Wuhan was higher than the deaths due to Coronavirus. The irony of modern life!
Villages : “खेड्यांबद्दल” या माझ्या नवीन लेखमालेत भारतीय खेड्याचा भूत-वर्तमान-भविष्यकाळ, खेडे व पर्यावरणस्नेही समाज, अशा मुद्यांबद्दल विचार-मांडणी केली जाईल.
या लेखात गांधीजींच्या संकल्पनेतील खेडे नक्की कसे होते ते बघू या.
गांधीजींच्या संकल्पनेतील आदर्श खेडे
Photos: The disappearing rivers of Iceland
EcoUniv Weekend Reads # 15
24 May 2020
Ecosystems: What are keystone species and why are they important?
Scientists: Three articles about Robert Paine, the scientist who discovered keystone species — each article has it’s unique insights.
Scientists: Robert May, who died recently, was a theoretical physicist by training and one of the founders of complexity theory. His mathematical models influenced diverse fields such as ecology, epidemiology and finance.
खेड्यांबद्दल: गांधीजी आणि रिचर्ड केसी यांच्यातील चर्चा – एक नवीन लेख.
गांधीजी व रिचर्ड केसी यांच्यातील चर्चा
EcoUniv Weekend Reads # 16
31 May 2020
Energy: The air-conditioner’s design has not changed for over a century. It has an energy efficiency of only 14%. India will go from 14 million AC units today to 1 billion units in 2050. Read about a R&D competition to propose alternative, energy-efficient designs for the AC.
The eight finalists for the Global Cooling Prize, whose prototypes are being tested for 60 days in Delhi summer of 2020:
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Botany: Pencil Pine, a conifer endemic to Tasmania is a threatened species. Though it can live for a 1000 years, it produces seeds only sporadically. It happened last in 2015. Now it is happening again, in the middle of the Pandemic. Read about the ongoing efforts to monitor the flowering and collect the cones.
Conservation: Roughly midway between the southern tips of Africa and S. America is a group of remote islands called Tristan da Cunha, named after the explorer who found them. Here, on the Gough Island, the Yellow-nosed albatross and Tristan albatross are at risk from giant mice, who eat their chicks alive, endangering their population. UK’s RSPB has started a conservation program at a remote location such as this.
Read about the conservation work and watch a related video.