Knowledge and Media

Knowledge and media as empowering and enabling tools for equity and sustainability

This section features stories of use of knowledge as an empowering and enabling tool for a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world. This includes: Initiatives that encourage cross-fertilisation between ideas, promotes information exchange and transcends boundaries between modern and traditional, formal and informal, and urban and rural spheres of knowledge; Initiatives that make information access free, or easier in places usually neglected, considered ‘remote’ or disconnected; Initiatives to make knowledge part of the ‘commons’ rather than a commodity, privately owned or controlled; Also initiatives that promote an alternative media that raises questions ignored or deliberately allowed to remain hidden in the mainstream media, and innovative use of media to communicate enabling information.

Kumaon Festival of Literature and Arts is doing something no one else is—refusing to grow

“We’re overwhelmed by the interest the festival receives, but we can’t accommodate everyone. The art and literature featured here must have some connection to the hills and the environment. That’s the only filter we use,” said Janhavi Prasada.

Legends of Sher Dariya (The Lion River)

The existential challenge for all of us now is: How can we listen to the rivers again? How can we become the voice for Indus and other rivers that are being polluted, dammed, divided and diverted?

How Young Filmmakers From the Northeast Are Using Their Cameras To Protect India’s Hidden Forests

Youth from the Northeast are using cameras to tell stories of their wild places. What began as a filmmaking initiative is now empowering communities to document and defend their biodiversity.

Engendering change

North East Network’s three decades in Nagaland show how transformation holds only when women’s voices and dignity are placed at the core.

Playing with plants

Soham Kacker shares how ‘befriending’ plants as playmates in his childhood opened the door to an adult career in ecology, and his lifelong love of plants

Beyond the Elephant and the Blind Men: A Story of Collective Sense-Making

Vikalp Sangam answers the parable: we listen to each sector's truth to see the whole elephant of an equitable, just & sustainable future.

 SUPPORT THE OBJECTIVES OF HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE OF ALTERNATIVE LEARNING (HIAL), RATHER THAN HARASS IT!

We are shocked at the Ladakh UT Administration’s move to revoke the land lease of the Himalayan Institute of Alternative Learning (HIAL).

Tracking seasons through changing tree behaviour

Citizen science platforms, such as SeasonWatch, are generating large-scale, long-term biodiversity data that help track ecological responses to climate change, such as changes in species distribution, flowering times, and migration patterns.

How a Homestay in Rural Bengal Is Helping 2500 Tribal Women Build Independent Lives Through Art

In a quiet village on the outskirts of Shantiniketan thrives a vibrant forest of craft, care, and community. Built by and for tribal women, Moram Earth is a movement rooted in art and rural craftspersonship.