Along the Betwa, a webinar and virtual exhibition was held on August 12th and presented by Radhika Singh and Sahil Joshi from MIT India. The event also featured panelists Siddharth Agarwal (Author and Founder of Veditum), Ulka Kelkar (Director of Climate World Resources Institute India) and Jagdish Krishnaswamy (Senior fellow at ATREE). The webinar was hosted by MIT India and moderated by Shahana Chattaraj, Director of Science and Research at World Resources Institute India.

Dr. Sharachchandra Lele has been nominated to an Expert Committee on Access and Benefit Sharing formed by the Karnataka Biodiversity Boards to advise the board in various matters such as evaluating applications for access to bio- resources, framing procedure for Prior Informed Consent (PIC) of the Biodiversity Management Committee, providing advice on legal issues and framing procedures for fair disbursement and utilization of the benefits from bio-resource use.

The article "Trees as Nature-Based Solutions: A Global South Perspective" has been published in the One Earth journal on ScienceDirect. This article by One Earth tries to get a consolidated viewpoint from various researchers on the potential role of trees in mitigating and adapting to global change, as well as doing so in a way that does not compromise other Sustainable Development Goals.
Dr. Sharachchandra Lele expresses his views on afforestation through a socio-ecological lens and critiques the undemocratic nature of forest governance implemented in the global south. Find the article here.

A perspective piece on the "Implementation of Critical Wildlife Habitat (CWH)" has been published by ATREE and the Kalpvriksh Community Forest Resource team in the latest issue of the Protected Area Update.
CWH is a provision in the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA) that focuses on the conservation of critical wildlife species in the Protected Areas (PAs) of India. It allows the possibility of modification/attenuation of community rights given under the FRA in order to protect habitats of critical wildlife species. It lays down the prerequisites, criteria and procedure for such modifications/attenuation of community rights. The team has also discovered some serious violations of these provisions in certain places and grave irregularities in the ongoing CWH implementation, with the state of Maharashtra being one such place that is currently suffering from these violations and irregularities, which are highlighted in the piece.

Socio-Legal Review has published the article "In the Belly of the Beast: EIA and its Willfully Engineered Failings", written by Mridula Mary Paul. The article takes a critical view on the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) functioning in a neoliberal world by looking at it as a political device as well as suggesting that India’s EIA regime has been "propped up in the interest of the prevailing economic system to be subservient to its needs". Find the article here.

ATREE fellow Siddhartha Krishnan's book review of "Nature Conservation in the New Economy: People, Wildlife and the Law in India", edited by Ghazala Shahabuddin and K. Sivaramakrishnan is now available ahead of print on Conservation & Society. Find the review here.