Articles by: Subhankar Banerjee

Charlie Swaney scanning for animals from his hunting camp, East Fork of the Chandalar River, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, August 2002).

Murder, Rape, and Torture: Fortress Conservation on Trial

On November 1, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres opened his remarks at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, with these words: “The six years, since the Paris Climate Agreement, have been the six hottest years on record. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it, or[Read More…]

by 04/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Polar bear on Bernard Harbor, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA (photo by Subhankar Banerjee, June 2001)

Kunming Declaration & Biodiversity Fund Set a Path toward a More Just Global Biodiversity Framework

In August 2019, in the middle of heavy monsoon rain and floods, my sister Sudakshina Sen (an avid wildlife photographer) and I arrived at the Western Ghats in southwest India, a global biodiversity hotspot. One day, we got stuck on the sinuous state highway SH-78, due to fallen trees on the road from the storm. Parked by the roadside was[Read More…]

by 21/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
The United States Must Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community 

The United States Must Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community 

Snow geese, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico. After spending the winter in New Mexico, the snow geese go to the Arctic (Alaska, Nunavut, Siberia) for nesting and rearing their young. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee, 1998). After a long stretch of public inattention, biodiversity conservation is a hot topic again, as if we had suddenly been jolted into awareness[Read More…]

by 13/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Bridge the North-South divide for a UN Biodiversity Framework that is more just

Bridge the North-South divide for a UN Biodiversity Framework that is more just

This month, the leaders of nation states from around the world have been gathered in New York City to attend the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Covid, climate and biodiversity are among the topics they are expected to address. Indeed, on September 21, in his sobering yet passionate address to the assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres focused attention on all[Read More…]

by 24/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise

Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise

On January 6, 2021, as many of us in the United States were glued to TV watching the horrors of the insurrection against the U.S Capitol, the AFP News in France posted, on its Facebook page, an infographic built with data provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which “confirmed the extinction in 2020 of 36 plant[Read More…]

by 20/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
Protecting Indigenous Languages is Protecting Biodiversity

Protecting Indigenous Languages is Protecting Biodiversity

One million animal and plant species face extinction due to human activity, according to the United Nations. Now, think about cultural production—art and literature that we have invested to address the extinction of just a handful of species (passenger pigeon included). Quite a bit actually. The extinction of one million species feels rather abstract, beyond the comprehension of human cultural[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 1 comment World
Species in Peril: Loss, Love and Protection

Species in Peril: Loss, Love and Protection

Human calamities abound. The unrelenting coronavirus pandemic has already claimed more than 900,000 lives worldwide. The images of exploding wildfires from the American Southwest—California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—look apocalyptic. Racial injustice and inequity in the United States marches on. And, the economic suffering?—painful. In this moment of so much death and suffering—do we even have the capacity to extend our[Read More…]

by 11/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Sundarbans after Cyclone Amphan​

Sundarbans after Cyclone Amphan​

Imagine this now: we try to create an acknowledgement for the loss of nonhuman lives in the Sundarbans caused by Cyclone Amphan—animals and trees; individual and relational; immediate and over time. That would be a monumental task and take not days or months but years and possibly even decades. Even after all of that efforts get expended, the tragedy will[Read More…]

by 06/06/2020 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
 image: laura c carlson, Conference of the Parties, 2019, Mixed media on paper.

A “Wild” Tale of Two Nations

“The coronavirus pandemic has made abundantly clear that if life is to thrive on this Earth, human and nonhuman, we need cooperation at all scales—global, regional, binational, within a nation, interstate, and in our local communities. And we need to learn how to coexist with and have compassion for our nonhuman relatives—and acknowledge in the midst of this pandemic that bats[Read More…]

by 27/04/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Bats are not our enemies, laura c carlson, 2020, graphite on paper.

COVID-19 Lights Up Biological Annihilation

“The most widely known visual representation of “justice” is a balanced scale. Imagine this now. We get up on the right scale-pan with our cattle and pigs—and all the rest of the wild mammals on Earth from land and the seas, blue whales and elephants included, jump up on the left scale-pan. The scale tips disproportionately to the right with[Read More…]

by 27/04/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Defend the Sacred Alaska—Arctic Refuge rally, Fairbanks, Alaska on March 7, 2018. (Photo: Pamela A. Miller)

Arctic Refuge Protectors: An Open Letter from Teachers and Scholars

Signed by Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Subhankar Banerjee, Finis Dunaway & Norma Kassi Fossil fuel development in the Coastal Plain would devastate an Arctic nursery of global significance. It would violate human rights, jeopardize food security, and threaten the health and safety of Indigenous communities. It would contribute to the escalating crises of climate change and biological annihilation. Signatories’ Note: We are inviting[Read More…]

by 12/02/2019 Comments are Disabled Environmental Protection
 A Planet in Loss Mode

 A Planet in Loss Mode

If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening to the nonhuman life forms with which we share this planet, you’ve likely heard the term “the Sixth Extinction.” If not, look it up.  After all, a superb environmental reporter, Elizabeth Kolbert, has already gotten a Pulitzer Prize for writing a book with that title. Whether the sixth mass species extinction of Earth’s history[Read More…]

On December 31, 2012, the Kulluk, a Shell drilling vessel, drifted aground off Sitkalidak Island in the Gulf of Alaska in 2012. (Photo: Day Donaldson/flickr/cc)

The Last Oil: Gathering to Resist Trump’s Reckless Arctic Energy Policy

The Last Oil is not a warning that we are running out of oil. On the contrary, there is so much oil — and gas and coal and other unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and methane hydrates — that if we continue to dig up and burn all these fuel sources, we will push the Earth’s climate toward a runaway[Read More…]

Drilling, Drilling, Everywhere…  Will the Trump Administration Take Down the Arctic Refuge? 

Drilling, Drilling, Everywhere…  Will the Trump Administration Take Down the Arctic Refuge? 

What happens in the Arctic doesn’t just stay up north.  It affects the world, as that region is the integrator of our planet’s climate systems, atmospheric and oceanic. At the moment, the northernmost places on Earth are warming at more than twice the global average, a phenomenon whose impact is already being felt planetwide.  Welcome to the world of climate breakdown — and to the world[Read More…]

by 10/11/2017 1 comment Climate Change
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