FROM THE PAST, A VIEW OF THE FUTURE
HT’s editors offer a book recommendation every Saturday, which provides history, context, and helps understand recent news events
June 5 is World Environment Day and the theme for this year is ecosystem restoration. To mark this day, we recommend the Anil Agarwal Reader series. Edited by Sunita Narain and Pratap Pandey, the series puts together the weekly essays and opinion pieces that eminent environmentalist and journalist, Anil Agarwal, wrote between 1991 and 2001. The series takes readers through a gamut of issues relevant to the environment versus development debate of the late 1980s through the 1990s; a critique of the politics, practices and discourse of development and their consequences for the environment and for the poor, most dependent on the environment for their survival.
Much of what Agarwal wrote holds true today. This is a must-read series because the environment is not just linked to well-being, but is also increasingly shaping local as well as global politics. The battles of the past will give us a view of the future.