Project Positions at ATREE's Community Environment Resource Centre (CERC) at Alappuzha

ATREE seeks to hire personnel for the following positions at its Community Environment Resource Centre (CERC) at Alappuzha for its conservation program “Strengthening Communities and Institutions for Sustainable Management of Vembanad Backwaters, Kerala” This is a Multi-pronged project that aims to strengthen local capacities in governance and wise use of wetland by establishing community monitoring systems and bringing together various stakeholders to envision a sustainable management plan.

1. Program Coordinator

The applicants are expected to lead the programme and contribute to the development of ATREE's Community Environment Resource Centre (CERC) at Alappuzha. The candidate must have experience in policy analysis, and an interest in catalyzing meaningful exchange and action among various stakeholder groups and institutions in the project area including government and non-government institutions. The work includes critically analysing policies with respect to the wetlands systems with a special reference to the Vembanad Backwaters and developing management models.

Qualifications: Applicants are expected to have a doctorate in Social Sciences/Environmental law, though candidates with a Masters degree and substantial professional experience will also be considered.

2. Program officer (Water Watch)

The applicants are expected to develop a proper scientific and planned strategy for regular monitoring of the water quality of Vembanad Lake with the participation of local communities and Local Self Government Institutions. The candidates are also expected to assist in developing the Wetland Conservation Information System.

Qualifications: A Masters degree in any branch of Natural Science with a sound knowledge in quantitative and qualitative research methods. Candidates with experience on working with rural communities would be preferable.

The candidates must have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work independently. The persons should be willing to work in tough field conditions, if the project demands. Candidates should possess good writing and communication skills and knowledge Malayalam will be beneficial

Interested candidates may send in their applications within 15 days after this advertisement or latest by June 15th (Clearly indicating the position they have applied for in the subject line) by email, to Ms. Kalpana Prasanna (kalpana@atree.org) with their CV, and a self-appraisal stating how best they suit to the position.

The selections will be done based on an interview of short listed candidates.

Dr. Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)
# 659, 5th A main, Hebbal, Bangalore - 560 024, India.
Phone: 91-80-3530069/3533942/3638771; Fax: 91-80-3530070

Source: email communication from Ms Kalpana Prasanna, Executive Assistant to the Director, ATREE
kalpana@atree.org

Register before 31st May, 2007

The National Workshop on Prioritization & Characterization of Fast Growing Native Tree Resources

Venue: Institute of Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding
Forest Campus, B.B. No 1061, R.S.Puram P.O.
Coimbatore - 614 002. Tamil Nadu

Date : August 8th-9th 2007

Convener : Dr M. Surya Prakash
Director, Institute of Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding
email: director@ifgtb.res.in
Tel: 0422-243 1942

Organizing Secretary: R.S.C Jayaraj
Silviculturist, Institute of Forest Genetics & Tree Breeding
email : jayaraj@ifgtb.res.in
Tel: 0422-24598128

Last date for registration and submission of abstract : 31st May 2007

Last date for submission of paper : 10th July 2007

Registration fees: Free


Organizers: Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun

Sponsor: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt of India

ATREE Research Seminar 2007 is on 30-31st May 2007

Program details of the ATREE Research Seminar 2007 - Governance and Policy

Session 1: Policies and Institutions - 30. 5. 07 (Wednesday)

Moderator : Ganesh
Rapporteurs : Vivek and Chetan

9.40-9.45 am - Welcome and introduction - Ravi Chellam

9.45-10.00 am - Conservation governance and policy at ATREE - Seema P

10.00-10.30 am - National Capacity Self Assessment in Biodiversity - Ravi Chellam

10.30-11.00 am - Biodiversity Act 2002 - Priyadarsanan

11.00-11.15 am - Break

11.15-11.45 am - Defining Forests - Arpana B

11.45-12.15 am - Coastal Regulations - Aarthi Sridhar

12.15-12.45 am - Conservation and livelihoods in protected and other forests - Siddharth Krishnan

12.45-1.15 am - Socio ecological and institutional issues in forested landscapes - Nitin Rai

1.15–2.00 - Break

Moderator : Ankila Hiremath

Rapporteurs : Bharat Sundaram and Aravind

2.00-2.30 pm : Adaptive management for conservation and sustainable use - Sushmita Mandal

2.30-3.00 pm : BCRLIP – summary of social and institutional assessment across landscapes Nitin Rai

3.00-3.30 pm : Citizenry in green space management - Savitha Swamy

3.30-4.00 pm : Land tenure and coffee plantations - Prakruthi P

4.00-4.15 pm : Break

4.15-4. 45 pm : Ecotourism: institutions, indicators and incentives - Sheetal Patil

4.45–5.00 pm : Strengths and gaps in policy related work - Gopal Kadekodi & Sharad Lele

5.00-5.15 pm : Open discussion

Session 2: Natural Resource Management and Livelihoods - 31. 5.2007(Thursday)

Moderator: Jagdish Krishnaswamy

Rapporteurs: Kiran MC and Nikhil Lele

9.45-10.00 am : Designing forest based livelihood programs - Bhaskar Sinha

10.00-0.30 am : Community based conservation in Darjeeling Himalaya - Nishat Ali

10.30-11.00 am : Insights for conservation from the protected areas of Darjeeling - Sunita Pradhan

11.00-11.15 am : Break11.15-11.45 am : Sand dune ecosystems in tsunami-affected mainland India - Kartik Shankar

11.45-12.15 pm : Impacts of the Sethusamudram Ship Canal Project - Sudarshan Rodriguez

12.15-12.45 pm : Strengthening Communities and Institutions for Sustainable Management of Vembanad Backwaters - Deepak Dayanandan and Jojo TD

12.45-1.15 pm : Building people friendly buffer around parks and sanctuaries - T Ganesh 1.15–

2.00 : Break

Moderator: Soubadra Devy Rapporteurs: Savitha and Aditya

2.00-2.30 pm : Integration of fire in the toolbox of forest managers - Ankila Hiremath

2.30-3.00 pm : Lantana camara: an invasive or a livelihood source - Ramesh Kannan

3.00-3.30 pm : Trends in landuse drivers in Karnataka - Sham Kashyap

3.30-4.00 pm : Drivers of reforestation - Harini Nagendra

4.00-4.15 pm : Break

4.15-4.45 pm : Strengths and gaps in NRM and livelihood related work - Gopal Kadekodi and Sharad Lele

4.45-5.15 pm : Open discussion

source : email communication from Dr Seema Purushottam, Associate Director, ATREE.

Controversy: The Bikram Yoga Patent Soup

Yoga is a 10 000 year old plus system of knowledge and healing followed by the people of India.

The regular practice of yoga by people in good health can work as a powerful, nearly cost free and simple way to stay fit and healthy for life.

Bikram Choudhary's efforts to patent yoga is shocking!

Equally alarming, till date, the US Patent and Trademark office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 trademarks on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

Do take a look at this!
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/US_patent_on_yoga_Indian_gurus_fume
/articleshow/2058285.cms


Here's another question

What is the best policy for the Indian government to follow to ensure that traditional systems of knowledge and healing like yoga stay protected as a people's low cost knowledge and healing system?

An interesting link

We hope this link will be very useful for PhD students struggling to master statistics.

http://my.execpc.com/~helberg/statistics.html#books
http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/

ICIMOD Books to be on-line by June 5th

Dear Friends,

We are pleased to inform you about the soft-opening of ICIMOD Books On-line. By soft opening, we mean that the site can now be accessed by outside users, but that we are not yet making any official announcement.

The site will be officially 'launched' on World Environment Day (June 5), we will use the time until then to identify and iron out any problems, if any. The resource is available at http://www.books.icimod.org , which is hosted along with the ICIMOD website in the USA, or can be accessed via the ICIMOD website.

Users accessing this site from ICIMOD will be automatically directed to an internal host, which is a copy of the above site but makes the resources accessible more quickly. ICIMOD Books On-line is a repository of downloadable electronic versions of ICIMOD technical /scientific publications in pdf files. It contains full-text and chapter-wise download options for all technical /scientific publications issued after year 2000 plus a few selected earlier publications, especially popular out-of-print manuals.

The title and table of contents will be posted for all other earlier publications, with an option to request the pdf file or photocopy (scan on demand). All books can also be ordered in hard copy.

The catalogue is searchable using full-text contents, title, year of publication, keywords, language, author and broad subjects. There are 140 ICIMOD publications (with 1300 pdfs) already added to the database, 103 documents of which are in complete full-text form and an additional 37 have the title page and contents page.

The e-library working team IKM-IMCO

Source: email correspondence from Tek Jung Mahat at tmahat@icimod.org to ATREE

Invitation to e-Conference on Climate Change and the Himalayan Glaciers

Hello Readers,

EAN is a member driven professional organisation of Environment Science, Environment Management and Environmental Engineering university graduates and professionals having long experience in the field of environment and development with special focus in Nepal.

Established in 2003, EAN aims to strengthen cooperation among the concerned professionals and build a network of like minded people and organisations in Nepal and abroad to ensure environmental sustainability in Nepal

We are pleased to inform you that the Environmentalists' Association of Nepal (EAN) in association with the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology (MoEST), Government of Nepal, is organising an e-conference on "Climate Change and the Himalayan Glaciers" form 7th May 2007 to 28th May 2007, to celebrate the World Environment Day in Nepal and the Himalaya. The event is supported by many international, regional, national organisations based in Nepal and abroad.

The objective of this e-conference is to facilitate a series of dialogues on the e-conference theme between different stakeholders. Synthesis of the first event in this series will be released on 5 June 2007, to mark the World Environment Day 2007. The e-conference is being organised to realise a need to promote knowledge sharing mechanism on the e-conference theme.

It's our great pleasure to invite you all to the e-conference and we hope your participation will be very useful in exploring and documenting various issues related to climate change and its impacts in particular to the youngest and most fragile mountain range of the world and also to promote information sharing mechanism in the region.

More information is available online at http://www.freewebs.com/climatehimalaya/index.htm .

You may also subscribe to the e-conference by sending your preferred email ID, full name and affiliation, if applicable.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you need more information or any clarification regarding the e-conference. You are also requested to forward the invitation to any individual or institutions, who you think would be interested to join and contribute.

We look forward to seeing your active participation in the e-conference.

Once again, welcome one and all, and thank you for joining us: We look forward to getting to know you!

With best regards,

Dr. Madan Koirala and Mr. Tek Jung Mahat
On behalf of the E-conference team
URL: http://www.freewebs.com/climatehimalaya/index.htm
Email: climatehimalaya@gmail.com

C/o Environmentalists' Association of Nepal
Kathmandu, Nepal
E-mail: eannepal@gmail.com
Web: http://www.ean.org.np/
Tel: 977 1 4410565, 4421071
Fax: 977 1 4411730--

"The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die." - Martin Luther King

Source: email correspondence to Mr Samuel Thomas, ATREE's Communications Officer from Tek Jung Mahat at tmahat@icimod.

1500 tribals in Gateha, MP attacked and forced to leave the land

On 19th April 2007, MP (Madhya Pradesh) state police and forest department officials rushed to Ghateha village in Rewa district of Madhya Pradesh and using fire and tear gas, they forcibly made 1500 tribals vacate the land near the village.

The tribal communities were not issued any notices under Sections 26, 32 and 80 A of the Indian Forest Act.

You can read the full article here at http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/may/soc-ghateha.htm