Courts of the Living

For the Dumagat in the Philippines, nature and all the resources in their ancestral land is a gift from the Supreme Being, Makidepat, to be used justly and never to be owned. As dam building projects destroy and denude the Sierra Madre mountain range, Dumagat people rise up in resistance against development induced displacement and a worldview which aims to exploit and dispossess. In this episode on Save Sierra Madre day, listen to Enjo and Deewa discuss the Dumagat people's worldviews on nature, and their powerful resistance against environmental destruction.

🐝 “If you see a bee, what do you do? Step back, so that you don’t get stung?”

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"The Solega person extends their hand for the bee to sit on, and talks to it"

So begins my conversation with Dr. Samira Agnihotri, whose work with the Soliga people in southern India shows us what multispecies coexistence can mean in practice. Samira leads the Coexistence Fellowship, which supports teams of researchers and conservationists over two years to study, imagine, and implement the coexistence paradigm. At its heart is a simple but radical philosophy: that conservation is strongest when it builds on local partnerships, shared knowledge, and the capacity of communities themselves.

References:

1. https://youtu.be/AxoLB-UZT9I?feature=shared

2. https://youtu.be/pOTCf56kcQA?feature=shared

3. https://www.climaterise.in/blogs/fireside-chat-with-dr-samira-agnihotri-on-reimagining-coexistence

4. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/conservation-science/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2021.691900/full

5. https://brill.com/view/journals/beh/157/14-15/article-p1239_7.xml

6. https://science.thewire.in/politics/rights/call-to-decolonise-ecology-conservation-field-research/

In Episode 3 of Courts of the Living, Irham Yunardi, Programme Coordinator at HAkA, speaks about HAkA’s inspiring work in Indonesia’s Leuser ecosystem — the last place on Earth where elephants, tigers, orangutans, and rhinos still share a home.

From stopping a hydroelectric dam threatening elephant habitats, to ensuring a palm oil company finally paid USD 26 million in fines for environmental damage, HAkA shows how community empowerment, advocacy, and vigilance can protect one of our planet’s most vital ecosystems.

References:

https://haka.or.id

Who is listening when a river cries to its people?

In episode 2 of Courts of the Living, Dr Rahul Ranjan discusses the legal lives of rivers, examining questions of personhood, rights and how rivers and their people might be in peril.

Even as the rights of rivers is slowly gaining momentum at the national and international levels, with many people starting to speak up about this, Dr. Rahul's work examines something fascinating - grief as a structuring affect in the Himalayas, and the ways in which hydropower projects put the rights of our rivers in peril.

References:

Can you hear the Rivers Sing? Legal Personhood, Ontology, and the Nitty Gritty of Governance: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/3094881/Clark-et-al,-Can-You-Hear-the-Rivers-Sing.pdf

Beyond legal personhood for the Whanganui River: collaboration and pluralism in implementing the Te Awa Tupua Act: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2024.2314532

Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/indigenous-water-rights-in-law-and-regulation/DFA764BDE6898B2DA778B5117262C5AB

Dr. Deyatima Ghosh is an ecologist integrating field ecology and animal cognition to understand conservation. In this episode, she takes  us on a journey into the lives of amphibians in India’s Western Ghats. Starting from her article - The Special, Spatial Lives of Amphibians, Dr. Ghosh talks to Courts of the Living on herpetofauna’s intelligence, on conservation behaviour, and what it means to decenter anthropogenic approaches to conservation.