Manshi Asher

Mediterranean wildfires are no accident This summer’s infernos expose how climate change, land neglect and disaster capitalism turn forests into fuel.

"These fires are neither isolated nor "natural" phenomena. They are expressions of a system in combustion, accelerated by climate change induced by our socioeconomic order and aggravated by land-use policies subordinated to accumulation, profit and growth." www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

The altered landscape

National Highway 707
Western Himalaya, Himachal Pradesh, India

June 2025

#newtopographics #manalteredlandscape #documentary #himalaya #photography

📣 Time to get your panels and abstracts in @pollenetwork.bsky.social conf 2026 is open for submissions. @icta-uab.bsky.social is a great place to host it - and it promises to be a blast (as always!) @danbrockington.bsky.social

pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/

Israeli forces take control of Gaza aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg British-flagged yacht operated by pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition was making symbolic attempt to deliver aid

Greta Thunberg knew that something like this would happen--that she and the rest of the team would be kidnapped by Israeli forces.

But she knew that her presence would increase global awareness of the genocide in Gaza.

That is courage. Brava.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | A life of defiance: the celebrated Kenyan author’s views were not without controversy but he inspired generations of African writers Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's journey from English to Gikuyu literature, decolonisation, and legacy in African literature.

In today’s @thehindu.com, my obituary for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o:

A Life of Defiance —

www.thehindu.com/books/author...

Drone footage of the site of the 30 May 2025 landslide at Gunung Kuda mine. Still from a video posted to Youtube by Andrea Ramadhan.

Google Earth image of the site of the 30 May 2025 landslide at Gunung Kuda mine.

On 30 May 2025, a landslide in a quarry at Gunung Kuda in West Java, Indonesia killed 25 people. There had been long term concerns about the potential for dangerous slope instability at the site. Reports document a long history of landslides in the mine:-
eos.org/thelandslide...

Indigenous delegation to London demands stronger action from UK government to protect forests and support Indigenous rights “We are being excluded from COP30 negotiations, but it is our land that has been affected.”

Indigenous leaders from Brazil and Malaysia recently travelled to London to urge stronger action from the UK government to protect forests and to support the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

They also called on the UK to stop its focus on carbon markets.

reddmonitor.substack.com/p/indigenous...

The political erasure of Indian Muslims INDIA IS HOME to 200 million Muslim people. More Muslims live here than in any other country in the world barring Indonesia and Pakistan.  Yet in 2023, the

Indian Muslims have been rendered electorally dispensable and therefore politically irrelevant; some might even go further and regard them a political liability, writes Harsh Mander:

no it’s actually because of the slavery

Of course Greta hasn’t forgotten about the climate. She just gets it that there is no hope for action against climate and biosphere destruction unless the world stops Israel-US-UK-EU’s genocide of the Palestinian people. She’s got courage and clarity, and is a real ally.

"#Development remains dominated by Savarna/oppressor #caste scholars & practitioners, reproducing caste hierarchies in teaching & research."

@ids.ac.uk colleagues on why we need anti-caste commitments in research & teaching in the UK & beyond

#Ambedkar #India

India's middle class is facing a severe debt crisis — with rising unsecured loans, stagnant wages, mounting EMIs, and deepening job insecurity. Modi is leading India down the same disastrous path that Trump took America on.

'Contaminated Legacies’ deep-dives into the Solid Waste question with a focus on landuse conflict & violations of env laws, forest rights in periurban mountain areas.I look at how courts' technomanagerialism sidelined realities & build on critiques of judicialisation of SWM tinyurl.com/35ym37s6

Waste as a Critique Abstract. This volume shows how waste in its manifold variety provides an innovative starting point for interrogating twenty-first-century society. Waste i

"Studying the production, management, disposal, & reuse of wastes tells us not only about wastes themselves, but also abt the political, social, & economic contexts in which they are embedded"
@hervecorvellec.bsky.social et al, Waste as a Critique.
1https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198907077.001.0001.

KIIT row: As many as 159 students of Odisha university return to Nepal, claim they were treated 'inhumanly' Nepali students return home after alleged suicide at Odisha university, sparking protests and diplomatic resolution.

Days after a Nepalese female student allegedly died by suicide at an Odisha university and the college administration ordered Nepali students to vacate the hostel, 159 students have returned to the country via Raxaul border, an official has said.
www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...

RIP James Ferguson: a tribute Very sad news. Jim Ferguson was a brilliant scholar, a leading light in Anthropology, development studies and the social sciences and an allround amazing intellectual. He profoundly influenced my t…

Rest in Peace James Ferguson.

@pollenetwork.bsky.social

brambuscher.com/2025/02/21/r...

Government yet to wake up from its slumber on Dam Safety Act: Supreme Court Supreme Court criticises government for failing to implement Dam Safety Act, demands transparency and action.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday orally said the Union government was yet to wake up from its “slumber” and fully implement a nearly five-year-old law to prevent disasters related to dams and ensure their safe functioning.
www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...

To hope.... #2025

A single 1” tall splitgill mushroom grows off the end of a broken branch, upturned so it’s underside can be viewed against a brown forest background All photos by me

Here is a nice mushroom

Bhopal Gas Tragedy: 40 years of Injustice As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, lessons to take from what happened on the awful night of 2 December 1984.

It is 40 years since the Bhopal gas disaster - which killed at least 22,000 people as a direct result of exposure to the chemical leak, with >half a million people in Indian permanent injured. No-one from the US multinational has been held to account
www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Observing that benefits outweigh potential drawbacks, India's Supreme Court panel backs setting up 5 hydropower projects on the Ganga river Basin, even as the Ministry of Environment & Forest, Water Resources Ministry opposed the projects on grounds of hazard risks. indianexpress.com/article/indi...

Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism from Summerfield Books Buy Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism Paperback / softback by Subramaniam Banu ISBN: 9780295752464

Cannot wait to get my hands on this one.... Thanks @amitangshu.bsky.social for sharing! Is the lecture online?

www.summerfieldbooks.com/product/bota...

Delhi air.

:D :D
@chenchenwrites.bsky.social

i go to twitter & there's post after post after post about israel's bombing of an 8-story apt building filled with sleeping families in the center of beirut.

i come here: nothin'

are the voices not here, or have i just not found them yet? or is this nothing but blue skies, blue skies from now on?

> Bathing in Oil at a Climate Summit? ... nytimes.com COP29 Climate Summit > What to Know China's Soaring Emissions I bathed in oil during the U.N. climate summit. It was crude oil from a half-mile underground, pumped into a bathtub at a hotel in Azerbaijan. It crept into every crevice of my submerged body and every fold of my skin. It smothered the hair on my limbs, making me look a little like an animal stuck in an oil spill. Then came an attendant to scrape it all off. Just a day earlier, I had been covering the United Nations' annual climate conference, COP29, which is being held this month in Baku, Azerbaijan, a place that helped give rise to the modern oil industry more than a century ago, enabling and endangering our civilization. Much has been made of the incongruity of those fighting to reduce fossil-fuel emissions gathering in a petrostate, but Azerbaijanis are proud of their oil, whatever conference attendees might think of it. For instance, it fueled the Soviet defeat of the Nazis in World War II. ADVERTISEMENT

> Bathing in Oil at a Climate Summit? ... nytimes.com COP29 Climate Summit > What to Know China's Soaring Emissions I bathed in oil during the U.N. climate summit. It was crude oil from a half-mile underground, pumped into a bathtub at a hotel in Azerbaijan. It crept into every crevice of my submerged body and every fold of my skin. It smothered the hair on my limbs, making me look a little like an animal stuck in an oil spill. Then came an attendant to scrape it all off. Just a day earlier, I had been covering the United Nations' annual climate conference, COP29, which is being held this month in Baku, Azerbaijan, a place that helped give rise to the modern oil industry more than a century ago, enabling and endangering our civilization. Much has been made of the incongruity of those fighting to reduce fossil-fuel emissions gathering in a petrostate, but Azerbaijanis are proud of their oil, whatever conference attendees might think of it. For instance, it fueled the Soviet defeat of the Nazis in World War II. ADVERTISEMENT

You can literally have a bath in real crude oil, just near #cop29

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/w...

There is plenty of documentation on India's infratsrtural interventions in the Himalaya. And the rail projects plus other mega infra are being built by both countries. 'Regional cooperation' is just all fluff discussed at climate conferences... What it actually is - a race to the bottom!

Fast development destabilizes India's Himalaya region – DW – 11/21/2024 As India boosts its infrastructure development in the Himalayan region, many ongoing construction projects are putting pressure on the fragile ecosystem. DW traveled to Uttarakhand, where communities ...

They'll be bringing down the mountain
They'll be bringing down the mountain
Before they go, oh before they go...
www.dw.com/en/fast-deve...
#Himalaya #dirtyhydro

Clash of the Toolkits: Where Farmers' Concerns and Environmental Activism Converge | THE BASTION When we blame farmers for polluting the environment, we completely miss the intersection that exists between food production, ecology, and the threat that neo-liberal market reforms pose.

On this note here's something I wrote during the Farmer's movement opposing three laws that would lead to further corporatisation of agriculture in India. thebastion.co.in/politics-and...

Okay but what is the fine on those who own and run smoke emitting machines...? Still not time to rethink how and how much we urbanise Or how and what kind of seeds we sow? #airpollution #delhi #india

scroll.in/article/1075...