Brazil claims to have clamped down on slash and burn tactics, slave labour and links to deforestation as it seeks to gain foothold in Europe’s lucrative biofuels market.

The report considers diversity of biological components, including wild and domesticated, social and ecological systems prevailing in the NE States of India and provides insight on hitherto underexplored biological resources with potential role in food security and the improvement of rural livelihoods towards adaptation to changing climate.

A working paper titled “Adapting to Climate Change: Conserving Rice Biodiversity of the Apatani Tribe in North East India” by Ms Swati Chaliha and Dr Promode Kant, has been published by the Institute of Green Economy (IGREC), New Delhi.

The impacts of tobacco cultivation on traditional agro-practices and knowledge, food security, agro-biodiversity and socio-economic conditions of a remote hilly tribal community of Bangladesh were investigated. Sixty per cent households were found practicing shifting cultivation compared with 10 yrs back changing local food availability. Local crop varieties were being lost due to low cultivation and weak seed preservation system. Despite better benefits from traditional cultivation, 90% people now fully depended upon tobacco cultivation for significant cash flow at a time.

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is situated in the Southeast of Bangladesh covering about 10 per cent of the total land. It is the native hoe of 13 tribal communities and these communities have their own traditional knowledge for natural resource managements. This paper provides 8 traditional knowledge namely, folk classification of landform, land use zoning, community reserve for common resource management, fuel wood selection for domestic use, water harvesting ditches, tree management in the jhum field by the Murang community, coppice management of Gmelina arborea Roxb.

The impacts of tobacco cultivation on traditional agro-practices and knowledge, food security, agro-biodiversity and socio-economic conditions of a remote hilly tribal community of Bangladesh were investigated. Sixty per cent households were found practicing shifting cultivation compared with 10 yrs back changing local food availability. Local crop varieties were being lost due to low cultivation and weak seed preservation system. Despite better benefits from traditional cultivation, 90% people now fully depended upon tobacco cultivation for significant cash flow at a time.

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is situated in the Southeast of Bangladesh covering about 10 per cent of the total land. It is the native hoe of 13 tribal communities and these communities have their own traditional knowledge for natural resource managements. This paper provides 8 traditional knowledge namely, folk classification of landform, land use zoning, community reserve for common resource management, fuel wood selection for domestic use, water harvesting ditches, tree management in the jhum field by the Murang community, coppice management of Gmelina arborea Roxb.

AIZAWL, June 3

Deforestation and forest degradation have been occurring for thousands of years. Both deforestation, which completely removes the forest canopy, and degradation, which maintains the canopy but causes losses of carbon, are important sources of global warming pollution, as well as threats to biodiversity and to the livelihoods of forest peoples.

For the last few decades and more particularly since 1990’s the issue of human rights-violation of rights to life and livelihood of tribal peoples’ is a central concern. Therefore, the discourse on tribal movements and issues of tribal livelihood revolved around securing their well-defined rights on land and forest resources.

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