Glimpses of ‘An alternative framework for environmental governance’ Or Few Aspects of Self-Help Green Society (SHGS)
A
Crisis in agriculture and environment is reciprocal to each other.
Environmental problem is a global, national and local phenomenon, which is to be addressed in all the three phases – globally, nationally and locally. In matters of environmental governance, work at the local level bears much importance. It not only can make the activity a manageable one, but also can give the achievement a concrete shape and, at the same time, can spread it naturally, if that might bear any truth and effectiveness.
As we are not good enough at making immediate sacrifices for an abstract benefit in the future, the ‘environmental and agricultural management’ must also be a part of a wholesome and integrated economic activity, which would generate short-term gains for all at the time of fulfilling mid and long term goals.
Though the movement is to be called ‘greenery for all’, the people could name the project ‘Autonomous Greenery, Fishery and Animal Husbandry by the People’ (AGFAP).
Greenery is nothing but another sort of agriculture of mid and long term duration. Talks are getting thick on ways of organic and diversified farming. Diversification of agriculture must be given space in every term of duration – short, mid and long. Organic agriculture needs diversification of agriculture and diversification (of agriculture) needs an extra security for its upkeep.
Diversification of agriculture spells a lot of things. Inclusion of diversification in short, mid and long-term agriculture economizes water-use to a great extent in one hand, and facilitates water harvesting by partially reorienting paddy fields, on the other. Following this reorientation long stretch of paddy field would be dotted with pits and higher lands to unravel the huge possibility of fishery and cash crops. Side by side, an efficient management of flood and drought would usher in the “Second Green Revolution.”
The main objective of the movement is to extend the sharecropping system currently existing in ample cases of short-term agriculture to mid- and long-term ones.
The main layer of security can well be ensured when the programme of diversified farming benefits everyone in the social hierarchy. This is the reason as to why the idea of AJFAP comes in, where all will gain and ‘Greenery for All’ may be a good point to start on.
The greenery in India started decreasing with the rhythm of centralization of state power and weakening of social relationship. Therefore, it is obvious that there is no alternative to utilizing the power of social relationship in the making and protection of greenery and other natural produce.
The existing social forestry scheme has some good effect on the reserved and restricted forests, giving rise to 10% of more greenery in most cases. However it failed to create anything beyond its jurisdiction. Particularly, percentage of greenery has decreased by almost 20% in 70% of land outside declared forest zones. And again, it failed to include 99.5% of people living in the villages in the programme for making the country green. Eventually it has become evident that the existing social forestry, which has so far been able to include only .5 % of people, has sadly failed to become a social one.
B
Inclusion of all persons living in a village is not so easy a matter. Particularly the task of managing almost 70% of land of this huge country and involving huge mass who were left out of the pale of social forestry, since they belong to different social or political classes. In the rally of unending types of ‘us and them’, the latest addition is partisan politics itself.
Keeping the problem of management of so huge land and people in view, entrepreneurship should be made in the micro level, comprising, say, 1000 people. Involvement of all the people of a locality can generate the resource of relationship in between every individual and each type of us and them prevailing in the society.
To ensure the involvement of every individual and so many types of us and them, promotion of a third factor is felt necessary. For this, a platform or a club is to be made taking all the persons of a locality as its members.
All – namely, the landowner, the landless labourers and the club – should achieve something from this project or movement. The club can get 30-40 % of share, where production is made under its direct supervision. The share of the landowners and the landless labourers can be 40 & 20-30 % respectively. The club can also earn a sizeable share by providing security and other assistance, in matters of processing and marketization, to the existing family farming, which the club should never try to get under its own management.
Direct activity of a club should be restricted to 10-15 % of land and water body – mainly unused or underused.
Since this platform will play a vital role in relation-making and in experimenting its possibility; its mode of formation would appear to be a matter of great concern. The members of the working committee would be elected through consensus. The head of the platform would be elected or selected in the same manner. Democratic formula of majority-minority method is irrelevant for the purposeful and meaningful involvement of all living in a locality. In a word, religious, casteist or political sectarianism have nothing to do with this sky-kissing as well as down to earth entrepreneurship for the welfare of all, with whom the project would be undertaken.
Efforts are to be made to utilise the potentials of schools, colleges and universities, mandirs, mosques and churches in the making of such a movement.
The platform or the club will play as a pivot in the management of AGPAP, around which the landowner and the landless labourer will have a swing. The club will be just like a ‘meson’ in the functioning of a nucleus in an atom or, if one is again allowed to put it metaphorically, like sakhis in the love-affairs between Lord Krishna and Srimati Radha.
Ultimately the programme would mean formation and activation of Self-Help-Green-Society(SHGS), which is not contradictory but contributory to the existing Self-Help-Group.
Formation and activation of a SHGS is genuinely a difficult job. However, unprecedented environmental crisis, while creating a petrifying effect, has started evolving new hopes too. It is becoming obvious that the paths currently traversed by mankind are suicidal. This situation, which gathers unprecedented gloom, has suddenly cast a more glowing light over the beauty and zeal of life, over every triviality around us, making it, perhaps, more exhilarating than before. Secondly, the crisis that is hovering over us and causing severe though not equal disaster to all of us, has the potential to bring together even those who were so far ardent opponents –
just as snakes and frogs take shelter in the same haven and stay peacefully at the time of devastating flood. Thirdly, change is taking place in the horizon. Those who were fighting against the multinational companies have now started working with them hand in hand. They call it a ‘historical reality’. It is in this context of this ‘historical reality’ that we are to take decision whether we will be agreed to take cooperation and coordination as a capital in the down to earth community work where poor and less-poor are residing. The details of so greatly important a club needs further elaboration.
The club or bottom level unit of SHGS (which would consist of around 1000 people as its members), will plant and foster around 1 lakh saplings.
Initially, there should be four sub-committees: A) Fodder sub-Committee [FC] B) Nursery sub-Committee [NC] C) Security sub-Committee [SC]. D) Marketing sub- Committee [M.S.]
The unit of the SHGS would declare in a written manner that they are not owners of trees but protectors and they would only get a share of the produce, which the owner would give as a portion of wage in lieu of mere money.
Any sponsorship is welcome only when the sponsor becomes a part of the SHGS and the community makes a minimum contribution collected from every individual as fees in form of money or labour or both.
The contribution of the individual, social or governmental sponsors shall not mean donation but investment for regenerating social relationship as capital and explore its endless possibilities.
The sponsor /s will get 10% of trees or its produce when land is provided by individuals, society or government. If he/they himself/themselves provide/s land, he /they will get additional 40% of trees or/and its produce as landowner/s.
C
What would be the effect of this AGFAP? If we are allowed to have a dream, it would ultimately give a new shape to the villages of India and, perhaps, it would peacefully bring about major changes in the towns and the cities of this country and, of course, transportation-biased economic activities. Huge details are there. It must be added that this spirit of cooperation tested in the making of AGFAP will, perhaps, get extended to many desired directions – such as: going towards organic farming and biodiversity, becoming self-reliant, morally awakened, creating the hope of a resurrection of the civil society. In a word, it would ultimately give birth to another renaissance for the 21st century. Our humble view is that, if our mother Earth gets the chance to see another renaissance, it must be sheltered in the village-universe even if it may have its starting from the cities. This renaissance can only ensure the stability of the part of our local as well as global civilization, which is continually retreating towards an unprecedented environmental crisis in human history.
The propasal has immense possibility hidden within it. Though it seems that its a tough challange to implement it, still “brillient ideas sail through the tough sea”. Best of luck to the movement.
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He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhD Dr Gary G Kohls MD[/caption]
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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First published at :
">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
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">Robert J BurrowesProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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First published at -
">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
Jishnu
October 23, 2009 @ 4:06 PM
The propasal has immense possibility hidden within it. Though it seems that its a tough challange to implement it, still “brillient ideas sail through the tough sea”. Best of luck to the movement.
vasan
October 28, 2009 @ 4:26 PM
i am also working in similar dimension. Rural Reconstruction with a comprehensive approach. How do i share my views with you ?
vasan