The climate justice is the concept of ensuring fair treatment and freedom from any kind of discrimination against the negative impacts of climate change. Both individually and collectively, in the form of adaptation and mitigation strategies, we are building our capacity to respond to the climate change, but the dimensions of environmental justice, equal treatment in the policy making and even the clear definition of vulnerable groups are often neglected. The climate justice is an evidence-based response to the environmental injustice and helpful in creation of fair policies and strategies to address the impacts of global warming by empowering the vulnerable groups with required legal resources, provision to ensuring necessary funding and capability to deal existing discrimination in the society. Historically, the journey of climate justice had begun with its recognition by the international bodies and legal frameworks. In the year 1992, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change insisted the member states to work together to reduce the greenhouse gases emission and also emphasized on the equity dimension of climate justice by mentioning the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ in the charter. It specifies the need of proactive participation of the developed countries to resolve the issue of global warming, which was fueled by their ambitions, and they should help the developing countries with technological advances and finance to respond to climate change. The dimension of climate justice for the individuals and the vulnerable groups is to achieve a fair, equitable and sustainable legal solution to deal with the existing injustice in the society. It is a new kind of environmental movement, which is advocating for achieving a socially responsible, scientifically sound and economically fairly distributed legal framework. Climate justice offers a fair treatment and equal platform to deal with the inconsistencies in the recognition of different vulnerable groups and lack of opportunities for involving in decision-making system. The paper discusses the sustainable approach to respond to the climate injustice, where the vulnerable groups, disadvantaged individuals and the least developed states, who contributed least in global warming, but likely to be most affected by its impacts. The paper explores the current research gaps and recommends the policies to prepare climate justice legal framework.

Ordinary physics being unable to specify an intelligent guiding principle to account for the apparent life’s intelligent design, some of the intelligent design movement advocates propose a metaphysical intelligent designer. In this regard, although intelligent design movement starts from a valid scientific premise, it ends up with a metaphysical inference that cannot be empirically falsified. Thus, it undermines its scientific credibility. Based on quantum information biology (QIB) which is a generalized physics hypothesis, we demonstrate that biological evolution is subject to a physical intelligent guiding principle (PIGP). Generalized physics (QIB) is a set of physical properties and laws that distinguish life from nonlife, irreducible to ordinary physics, and admit limiting transition to quantum mechanics. In other words, biology, or some aspects of it, is generalized physics. According to the PIGP, a species’ increase in bio-complexity, phylogenetically, measured in terms of Jorgensen’s eco-exergy density is a function of its bio-intelligence. Bio-intelligence has the dimensions of action, information and time; it is the capacity to generate bio-complexity and represents evolution target criterion. The PIGP does not clash with Darwinian evolution basic mechanism, random mutational changes and natural selection. Because natural selection selects beneficial mutations and beneficial mutations are those which satisfy the criteria of bio-intelligence, they are not random. Bio-intelligence is the origin of human intelligence, i.e., “The nature of intelligence is nature’s intelligence.”

Farmers in the Indian Himalayan region have been practicing agroforestry since time immoral. Agroforestry practice complements hill farming and forms the backbone of subsistence agriculture. The present study was carried out in four districts of Garhwal Himalaya. Agroforestry area was demarcated using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System techniques. The information regarding agriculture and tree crop pattern was collected through questionnaire survey and direct observations. The agri-horti-silviculture is very common practice of this region. As compared to geographical area the net sown area is very low with wide variations within study area. A small portion of the net sown area has been utilized for the agroforestry purpose. Topographical factors play a crucial role in utilization of the land for agroforestry purpose. Highest agroforestry area, as well the highest agroforestry land as percentage of total geographical area, was estimated as 2.13 % in one of the district of study area. Within 300–7100 m a.s.l. of study area, maximum agroforestry was found in 1201–1600 m a.s.l. altitudinal zone and in 21°–30° slope. Cropping pattern is dominated by the traditional and low productivity crops, providing basic livelihood for a vast majority of the population. Many farmers in the Garhwal Himalayan areas are struggling to make a livelihood due to lack of other avenues of employment and small land holdings, leading to migration of mountain people toward plains. It is presumed that the rate of migration can be reduced once the agroforestry potential of this area is harnessed at an optimum level.

Analysis of soil redistribution patterns in watershed areas provides information for understanding soil erosion and deposition for implementing management practices to improve agricultural land conditions and reduce sediment loads in river systems. This paper has demonstrated the use of Cesium-137 (¹³⁷Cs) in estimating retrospective medium-term soil erosion rates in selected cassava cultivated areas in Pilar, a sub-watershed within the Inabanga watershed. To estimate erosion and deposition rates and elucidate the factors affecting the soil redistribution, samples were collected from a total of ninety-eight grid intersections representative of the local land use and slope gradients in the presence or absence of soil conservation practices. A proportional model was used to deduce soil redistribution rate estimates from ¹³⁷Cs inventories measured from individual soil samples. Soil measurements of ¹³⁷Cs activity-generated soil erosion rate gave values of 13.15 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ in cultivated areas practicing conservation measures and 22.23 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ in those with typical upland plantation, with the former corresponding to slight erosion case and the latter to moderate erosion case. The obtained values have provided an overview of the pattern of soil redistribution in the watershed area and reflect the impact of strategic soil erosion management being applied. Interestingly, in light of recent severe meteorological events befalling the region, e.g., super typhoon Haiyan and the 7.3 magnitude earthquake, the data obtained may serve as benchmark values for ¹³⁷Cs activities against which changes in the soil movement and soil redistribution pattern along the watershed areas can be evaluated.

Forests have been very important natural resource for rural subsistence lifestyle providing variety of and provisioning ecosystem services. Study was carried out in six villages of upper Kedarnath valley at an altitudinal gradient of 1400–2800. Paper examines the nature and extent of provisioning services from forests to hill locals living in nearby villages. Frequent field survey of 151 households from five villages in proximity to forest was conducted using semi-structured questionnaires followed by field surveys. Primary data were collected for basic household’s attributes, fuelwood, fodder, leaf litter and NTFP collection pattern. Simple descriptive methods were used for data analysis. The result shows that fuelwood contributes more than 95 % of total domestic fuel requirement in the study area with more collection during summers but more consumption during winter months due to extensive drop in day and night temperatures. Fodder collection is a major practice adding a lot to women drudgery, and winter fodder deficit is a major issue that leads to dry fodder collection from remote locations. Similarly the average seasonal collection figures were also high for leaf litter ranging from 120 to 89 kg/household/day. Collection of wild edibles is moderate, while for medicinal plants is low in the study area. Resource availability, collection and consumption depend on the family size, distance from forest area and economic condition of the household. More than 95 % of the household’s biomass demands and requirement in the study area are fulfilled completely from forests, while rest are procured from various sources such as agroforests and agriculture.