The First Domestication Was Feminist

Female Great Apes Tamed Male Primates Millions of Years Ago

[Excerpt from Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men’s Domestication of Women and Animals and Female Resistance (forthcoming, 2017) by Moses Seenarine, Ed.D]

The Great Apes

The subduing of mammalian males by females is an extensive and ongoing process in numerous species across the Globe. The first domestication realized among the great apes family in the primate order was the taming of sperm-producers by egg-producers. Even though balance between the sexes fluctuates, females wield great power in sex-selection.

Female reproductive achievement is limited by resource availability and acquisition. In contrast, male reproductive success is limited by access to mates and the number of fertilizations, and may therefore be more variable. Phallic apes have to obtain young-bearers' approval, who may have a preference for younger mates. So power relations among social primates are situational and constantly changing.

Primates are characterized by refined development of the hands and feet, a shortened snout, an ample brain, as well as an increased reliance on stereoscopic vision at the expense of smell, the dominant sensory system in most mammals.¹ Many primates have specializations that enable them to exploit particular foods, such as fruit, leaves, gum or insects.²

The great apes or Hominidae are sizable, tailless primates, with the smallest living species being the bonobo at 60 to 90 pounds (30 to 40 kg) in weight, and the largest being the eastern gorillas, with males weighing 300 to 400 pounds (140 to 180 kg). The Hominidae family include seven species in four genera. One genus is Pongo consisting of the Bornean and Sumatran orangutan. Another is Gorilla, with the eastern and western gorilla.

A third genus is Pan comprising of the common chimpanzee and the bonobo. And finally, there is Homo, with human and near-human ancestors and relatives, like the Neanderthals. Fruit is the preferred food among all with the exception of human groups. Human teeth and jaws are markedly smaller for their size than those of other apes, which may be an adaptation to eating cooked food.³

(Image: Orangutan-human comparison)

Similar to the male bias held by mainstream anthropologists, primate researchers are male-centric, and their work has focused on the role of phallic individuals vying for leadership of groups. Often viewed as more passive, egg-producing apes' manipulation of sex selection and other aspects of power are frequently understated and misinterpreted in primate studies.

The great apes have varying degrees of female-centered involvement in their cultures, from solitary orangutan mothers who avoid contact with males to female-led bonobo clans of over 100 individuals. Resident orangutan females live in defined home ranges that overlap with those of other adult egg-producers, who may be their immediate relatives. Females tend to settle in home ranges that overlap with their mothers,⁴ and so live mostly within a gynocentric grouping.

The notion of phallic-dominated gorillas with a lone silverback defending a group of egg-producers is problematic since this leads to increased sexual insecurity for sperm-producers. There are several advantages for silverbacks to follow the wishes of female gorillas, for example, food and reproductive security.

(Image: Bonobos are very social apes - W H Calvin)

Pan: Bonobo

The most successful first-domestication among the great apes was that of bobono sperm-producers by egg-producers. This taming can probably be traced to the split between the two Pans, around one million BP. In contrast to chimpanzees, bonobos are relatively egalitarian and nonviolent. They are not phallic-dominated but instead display a mix of gynocentrism and sexually receptive behavior.

Sharing 98.5 percent of the same DNA as humans, it is not surprising that bonobos possess very human-like qualities. They embody a profound intelligence and emotional capacity. Bonobos have picked up on many facets of human culture through simple observation, and have learned how to communicate in human languages, use tools, and play music.⁵

Egg-producing bonobos frequently form coalitions even though they are generally with non-relatives. All-female coalitions of two or more individuals form spontaneously to attack males, usually after sperm-producers behaved aggressively towards one or more bonobo female.

Bonding enables bonobo females to dominate most of the males. Although male bonobos are individually stronger, they cannot stand alone against a united group of egg-producers. One researcher concludes, “coalitions in female bonobos might have evolved as a counter strategy against male harassment.”⁶

Interestingly, bonobos have highly individualized facial features, as humans do. So like us, one individual may look significantly different from another bonobo. This adaption facilitated visual facial recognition in social interaction.

Bonobos can live in close-knit social groups of a hundred individuals or more. During the day, the group break into smaller groups to forage in different areas, but the whole clan sleeps together at night. The ancestors of humans might have adopted the same foraging and sleeping behavior. And they may have occupied temporary retreats, or settlements, for extensive periods of time. So human settlements, or what is commonly considered as 'domestication,' is much older than 12,000 years.

Between bonobo groups, social mingling may occur, in which members of different communities have sex and groom each other. This behavior is unheard of among common chimpanzees. While social hierarchies do exist, rank plays a less prominent role than in other primate societies. Primatologist Frans de Waal thinks that bonobos are capable of altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience, and sensitivity. He describes "bonobo society" as a "gynecocracy."⁷

Females have a higher social status in bonobo society than the other great apes. Aggressive encounters between females and male bonobos are rare, and sperm-producers are tolerant of infants and juveniles. Bonobos carry and nurse their young for four years and give birth every 4.6 years. Akin to the other great apes, bonobo mothers assume the entirety of parental care.

(Image: A bonobo mother and infant at Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, DRC. - Christina Bergey)

A male bonobo derives status from the social position of his mother, similar to chimpanzees, and hanging out with mom can boost a sperm-producer's chances of getting intimate with a fertile female.⁸ The mother–son bond often stays strong and continues throughout life.⁹

Compared to chimps, bonobos show more sexual behavior in a greater variety of relationships. Bonobos frequently have sex, sometimes to help prevent and resolve conflicts. Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in tongue kissing, and oral sex. Bonobos and humans are the only primates that engage in face-to-face genital sex.¹⁰

Bonobos do not form permanent monogamous sexual relationships with individual partners. They also do not discriminate in their sexual behavior by sex or age either. When bonobos come upon a new food source or feeding ground, the increased excitement will usually lead to communal sexual activity, presumably decreasing tension and encouraging peaceful feeding.¹¹

Female bonobos engage in mutual genital behavior, possibly to bond socially and form a female nucleus of bonobo society. Egg-producers rub their clitorises together rapidly for ten to twenty seconds, and this behavior, "which may be repeated in rapid succession, is usually accompanied by grinding, shrieking, and clitoral engorgement."¹² Adolescent females often leave their native community to join another group. Sexual bonding with other egg-producers establishes these new females as members of the group.

Bonobos' diet is for the most part vegetarian and sustainable. Foraging in small groups, bonobos feast primarily on fruit, but they also eat leaves, flowers, bark, stems, roots, insect larvae, worms, crustaceans, honey, eggs, and soil. The female-centered nature of bonobo and other primate societies show that male domination among humans is an anomaly among primates, and that it can be changed.

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1Most primates have opposable thumbs and some have prehensile tails. Many species are sexually dimorphic. Primates have slower rates of development than other similarly sized mammals and reach maturity later, but have longer lifespans. Most primates live in tropical or subtropical regions of the Americas, Africa and Asia. They range in size from the mouse lemur, which weighs only 30 g (1 oz), to the eastern gorilla, weighing over 200 kg (440 lb).

2K Strier. 2007. Primate Behavioral Ecology (3rd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.

3Richard Wrangham. 2007. "Chapter 12: The Cooking Enigma". In C Pasternak. What Makes Us Human? Oxford: Oneworld Press

4EA Fox. 2002. "Female tactics to reduce sexual harassment in the Sumatran orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus abelii)". Behav Ecol Sociobiol 52 (2): 93–101.

5To 'ape' someone is to copy them. This points to how similar apes are to humans

6N Tokuyama & T Furuichi. 2016. "Do friends help each other? Patterns of female coalition formation in wild bonobos at Wamba." Animal Behaviour, 119:27–35 Sep

7F de Waal & F Lanting. 1997. Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape. U of California P.

8Martin Surbeck et al. 2010. "Mothers matter! Maternal support, dominance status and mating success in male bonobos (Pan paniscus)." Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sep 1.

9Orcas, hyneas and other creatures also share strong mother-son bonds.

10Susan Block. 2014. The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure. Gardner & Daugh

11F de Waal. 1995. "Bonobo Sex and Society." Scientific Am 272 (3): 58–64. Mar

12JP Balcombe. 2011. The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure. UC Press. p. 88

Prehistory Was Female-Centered

Early humans lived in ecogynocentric cultures and worshiped Earth Goddesses

(Excerpt from Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men's Domestication of Women and Animals and Female Resistance (2017) by Moses Seenarine)

(Female Hand print, Chauvet cave, France c. 32,000 BP)

The Earth and her organisms are wholesome, active entities. Each unique creature has individual and collective interests and relationships. However, acting like aliens, modern men or Cyborgs have reduced and eliminated the subjectivity of Earthlings to establish themselves as the only 'real' subjects in both theory and practice.

The status of being a subject is central to having rights and safeguards under a patriarchal society. Framing unique, individual beings as similar objects is a key strategy of patriarchal reduction and oppression. This article sketches female subjectivity during prehistory and their extraordinary decline in status when men gained control over human organization. It starts with a brief look at how female-centered societies were associated with Goddess ideologies. After this, the decline of the Greek Goddess, Metis, is explained. And the article concludes with an examination of the great fall in female status in the post-Stone Age.

(Woman/Goddess of Willendorf, Germany c. 28,000 BP)

♀ Roles & the Goddess

Female-centered primate cultures existed for millions of years, and females held a high status within the earliest human groups, around two million BP. Also, from the dawn of the species over 200,000 years ago, females have been active participants in shaping culture, behavior, and human destiny.

The notion of a Goddess was central to Stone Age oral traditions, imagery, gynecology, and female-centered thinking. Gynocentric practices revolved around reverence for various Goddesses, and evolved along with our human-like ancestors.

The Goddess perspective was maintained during humans' continuous migration out of Africa to populate the Earth, so it was a Global one. Gynecological sanctions were part of Goddess narratives, and adhering to these environmental laws ensured long periods of sustainability for our species.¹

Stone Age humans viewed the Earth as a providential Goddess and a fertile Mother, and females' prominent positions were connected to the bountiful Deity. Under the Goddess worldview, nature and animals were perceived as female – sacred, mighty, and nurturing. Men were active participants in female-led communities, with valuable roles and strong ties to their maternal clans.

As fully realized subjects, females led child-centered groups under the protection of various Earth Goddesses. Then, as now, egg-producing humans were creative, intelligent, reasonable, courageous, and powerful. They were likewise generous, compassionate, moral, socially responsible, and hard-working.

Stone Age females lived in matrilocal kin groups based on maternal residence and group motherhood. Clans were also matrilineal, with inheritance based on maternal lineage.² The Goddess-centered economy was proportionate and equal, with gift-giving playing a primal role in fostering cooperation and solidarity between female communities.

The tightly-knit, female-centered social organization kept the power of human male animals in balance during the Stone Age. Lack of art and other physical evidence imply there was an absence of conflict, and the numerous successful migrations across the globe suggest vast periods of human cooperation.

In many parts of the World, Goddess worship and females held dominant roles, but over the past centuries, grave robbers pillaged a lot of this evidence. The burial of a 4,500 years old Siberian noblewoman from the ancient Okunev Culture that was found undisturbed provides a glimpse of the history that was wiped out.

The early Bronze Age grave include an incense burner decorated with solar symbols - three sun-shaped facial images which match ancient rock art in Siberia. There were also two jars, cases with bone needles inside, a bronze knife, 1,500 beads that once adorned the woman's costume, and 100 pendants made from animal teeth.³

In the Americas, female authority persisted into the last millennia. For example, the priestesses of Moche were renowned for their monumental architecture and rich visual culture. Regarded as the first state-level civilization in the Americas, the Moche inhabited the north coast of Peru from 2,000 to 1,200 BP.

The Moche flourished before the Incas, but at the same time, the Mayas thrived in Mexico and Central America. The Moche developed the inland desert with a complicated system of irrigation used for agriculture. They built adobe pyramids, and, like other gynocentric cultures, used an Earth Goddess to unify their society.⁴

The Moche had no written language but left thousands of ceramic vessels with intricate drawings portraying their daily lives and beliefs about the human and supernatural worlds. Moche artists crafted ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual sophistication depicting the Goddess and female life cycles.

The eight royal tombs of Moche priestess discovered contained extensive artifacts, and the complexity of the burial reveal the power and influence the women wielded in life. Archaeologists know the eight women were priestesses because of their resemblance to figures depicted in rituals scenes found in Moche art.

The women were priestesses, but they could have likewise been rulers. The political and religious realms were blended in ancient cultures, and rulers were often the priests. For instance, the Señora de Cao, who reined around 1,700 BP, is considered the first female sovereign of pre-Hispanic Peru.⁵

(A winged goddess depicted under Zeus' throne, possibly Metis c. 2,550 BP)

Remembering Metis

In Greek, Metis means 'wisdom,' 'skill,' or craft.' In pre-patriarchal Greek religions, Metis was of the older Titan generation and an Oceanid. Metis was born of Oceanus and his sister Tethys. She is of an earlier age than Zeus, the chief male god, and his siblings. This era was the age of the Goddess when male deities were rare or insignificant.

Metis was the Titan­ Goddess of good advice, planning, and cunning. She was the mother of wisdom and sound thought. After the decline of gynocentrism, Metis was reduced to a counsel and spouse of Zeus, and besides, his cousin.

A prophecy revealed that she was destined to bear a son greater than his father. Zeus became jealous and tricked Metis into turning herself into a fly. Then, he promptly swallowed her. Trapped, Metis spent the rest of her life giving Zeus advice from inside him.

Inside Zeus' belly, Metis conceived a daughter. In time, she began making a helmet and robe for her fetus, and her hammering caused Zeus great pain. Eventually, her daughter, Athena, re-birthed from the god's head fully grown and armed with a war-cry.

In later Greek mythology, after the solidification of patriarchal versions of earlier religions, poets described Athena as a "motherless goddess" and did not mention Metis. Other versions of Athena noted that Zeus, her father, later attempted to rape her. Athena killed him without hesitation and took his name and skin. In many different versions of the story, Athena never has a birth mother. Plato identified Athena with Neith, a much more ancient Triple Goddess from Libya.

Zeus swallowed Metis and made her a part of himself. But that was not enough. By having Athena born only from Zeus, the narrative gave males authority and power over something that had previously only been a female realm, the cycles of reproduction. Moreover, this framing of male-birthing removed all female association with wisdom.

In remembering Metis, this study is reclaiming female prehistory and wisdom as female-centered. It is asserting that gynocentric cultures existed among early humans and lasted throughout the Stone Age. Honoring Metis reminds us that ancient gynecological principles were sustainable and a return to these practices can slow down planetary heating and help to restore harmony on Earth.

(Woman/Goddess of Çatalhöyük c. 8,000 BP)

The Great Fall of ♀

Stone Age gynecological worldviews that honored females and nature through various Earth Goddesses survived well into the so-called 'agrarian' era. But by the Bronze Age, even though some Goddesses remained, sex roles and status were totally reversed. Maleness became prized, at the detriment of other subjects, and females, nature, and the Goddess were collectively debased to mere objects for male use.

Men's opportunity arose with females' continuous innovations in cultivating plants during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (12,200 to 4,500 BP). Sperm-producing humans embraced, learned, then took over female cultivation technologies, but this was not the end. The stupendous decline in female status and culture, and the attendant rise of patriarchy, are related to animal enslavement that occurred later.

By 9,500 to 9,000 BP, agricultural economies that relied on a mix of domesticated crops and farmed animals were fully crystallized in the Middle East. Soon after, many aspects of daily life in the Fertile Crescent were diffused into the Mediterranean and elsewhere.⁶ The agrarian transfer package included subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, social networks, and cyborg belief systems.

By 8,000 BP, male-dominated farming economies led to the rise to powerful cyborg city-states in Eurasia. The sovereignty of female clans honoring Earth Goddesses was comprehensively diminished, and egg-producing humans were prevented from amply expressing themselves in increasingly male-dominated societies. Formerly honored girls were disempowered and objectified into tools by the falsely entitled cyborg herders.

The Bronze-Age started around 5,000 BP, and durable weapons increased male violence across the Globe as embattled men competed to rule over each other. Across Europe, patriarchal ideology continued to replace matrilineal and matrifocal systems, which severely affected females' personal, social, and economic status.

The pistillate⁷ calamity intensified around 1,500 BP when Christians and Muslims began to replace the thousands of female-honoring Goddess cultures in Africa and Eurasia with a single patriarchal god. In a short time span, in cultures across the world, once sovereign beings were objectified into reproductive objects and restricted to the domestic sphere.

In Gyn/Ecology, Mary Daly notes, "this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what it is, is necrophilia - not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but of love for those victimized into a state of living death." The domestication of 'ladies' is ongoing and so too is its resistance. Sarah Ditum argues that women cannot remain neutral on the feminist issue because the battlefield is our bodies: “There’s no way to avoid picking a side when you yourself are the disputed territory.”

While there has been some progress toward sexual equality in modern times, gains have also been eroded and "the much needed positive developments are not happening fast enough.” This conclusion was made at the 2017 UN Commission on the Status of Women, by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, the United Nations agency charged with promoting women's rights.⁸

In addition to receiving one-third less wages than a man, over half of all women workers around the world, and up to 90 percent in some countries, are informally employed. The informal economy consists of low-cost, female farm workers, street food vendors, care workers, and so on. These girls and women work without legal or social protection, and in India alone, this sector accounts for 190 million women. "They are the under-the-radar and under-valued cogs in the bigger wheels of the formal economy," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

The UNW director note that changing discriminatory laws in over 150 countries "could affect more than three billion women and girls in the world." And empowering females politicallly can lead to many positive changes, including economic one. For instance Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka suggested that "advancing women's equality in total could bring a potential boost of 28 trillion U.S. dollars to global annual GDP by 2025."

Women and children represent seventy-five percent of humans. It makes sense that society should be organized around the interests of this majority, rather than a hopelessly insecure minority that is clearly unfit to rule. Returning the Goddess and women to their rightful place in prehistory and the present is not only good for females, but for males, and the entire Earth. Women and men ignore this imperative at our own peril.

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1Goddess beliefs were part of gynecological land management practices that contributed to the long-term survival of the species. The contrasting notions of power and transcendence over nature and nonhuman animals are fundamental aspects of patriarchal thought, which are unsustainable and self-destructive as the climate crisis demonstrates.

2Chris Knight. 2008. “Early Human Kinship Was Matrilineal.” In N. J. Allen, et al, eds., Early Human Kinship. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 61-82.

3Staff. 2016. "Found: grave of Siberian noblewoman up to 4,500 years old." Siberian Times, Aug 19.

4S Bourget & K Jones. 2009. The Art and Archaeology of the Moche: An Ancient Andean Society of the Peruvian North Coast. U of Texas Press

5Liz Mineo. 2016. "Where women once ruled." Harvard Gazette, July 19.

6Melinda Zeder 2008. "Domestication & early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, & impact." PNAS 105(33):11597-604.

7A flower that lacks stamens is pistillate, or female, while one that lacks pistils is said to be staminate, or male.

8Edith Lederer. 2017. "Women's Rights Are Under Attack Worldwide, Warns U.N. Chief." AP, Mar 13

India's Population Bump and Its Consequences

India's Population Bump and Its Consequences

 Is India's growth rate sustainable and equitable? 

by Moses Seenarine

(This article was published on OpEd News on 08/04/2017)

Growth for Who?

India is a young country with a fast growing annual GDP of above seven percent in 2016, up from two percent at Independence in 1947. India's per capita income rose from Rs. 7,513 from 1950 to Rs. 69,959 to 2014, yet according to the World Bank, it had the largest number of poor people in any country in 2012.

The country's economic growth is lauded by the ruling class, but is India's growth rate sustainable and equitable? What is the cost of decades of growth in terms of environmental degradation and social exclusion? India is portrayed as one of the world's top greenhouse gas polluters, but India’s extended period of economic growth is driving energy consumption, not necessarily its people.

Economic growth has remained positive since the mid-1970s and has hovered above five percent since the 1990s. Exports grew from $59 million in 1958 to over $30 billion in 2013, while food grain production rose from 51 million tonnes in 1950 to 257 million tonnes in 2012. Widespread belief in a raising GDP is viewed as a solution for all India’s social and political problems, and the growth rate is the only indicator of progress to which all Indian politicians pay homage. But there is an annual negative balance of trade of $13 billion, and total external debt of $470 billion.

The youth unemployment rate hovers around 13 percent officially, but the actual figure may be much higher. The Rangarajan study estimated that 363 million, or close to 30 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people lived in poverty in 2011-12. The study considers people living on less than Rs 32 a day in rural areas and Rs 47 a day in urban areas as poor. A vast majority of the poor come from Dalit and other disadvantaged communities.

Population Bump

The median Indian age is under 27 years, slowly raising from its low of 19 years in the 1970s. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan. The population growth rate is falling, and the pace of the decline has increased in the last few decades. The first decade of the new millennium saw fewer people added to India’s population than in the previous decade.

Women are the main reason for this decrease in growth rate. Indian women are having fewer children, and they are choosing to stop having kids early, so the mean age at childbirth is falling. The average fertility is 2.3 children, well down from 5.9 births per female in 1951, and is expected to further decline to the replacement rate of 2.1 by 2025. The rural fertility figure is 2.5, and in urban areas it is 1.8, close to the European Union’s 1.6. The urban population is around a third of the total, around 400 million people. The number of female births for every male birth in India is very low and just above that of China, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The sex ratio was 944 females for 1000 males in 2016, but this disparity should start to improve by 2020, when male and female child mortality is expected to be similar.

While the tremendous decline in fertility rate means that India does not represent a population bomb, there is a significant bump ahead due to demographic momentum that can still lead to resource problems and ecological crisis. Indians already represent a fifth of the world's humans, totaling over 1.3 billion in 2016, so the current slight value above the replacement rate translates into hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades. According to a 2017 United Nations' report, India will overtake China to become the world's most populous country within the next seven years. And, India's population will continue to grow until 2061 to over 1.7 billion people, by which time China's numbers is expected to decline to 1.2 billion.

Consumption Bulge

In 2012, India had the tenth-largest economy in the world but was the fourth-largest energy consumer, trailing only the United States, China, and Russia. Primary energy consumption more than doubled between 1990 and 2011. India was the fourth largest consumer of oil and petroleum products in the world in 2011, after the United States, China, and Japan. India relies heavily on imported crude oil, mostly from the Middle East, and became the world's sixth-largest liquefied natural gas importer in 2011.

India's power capacity increased from 1,323 MW in 1947 to 240,000 MW in 2013. Coal is India's primary source of energy; the power sector accounts for more than 70 percent of coal consumption. India's dependence on imported energy resources and its inconsistent energy sector reform may make it difficult to satisfy rising demand. Because of insufficient fuel supply, the country suffers from a shortage of electricity generation, leading to rolling blackouts.

Due primarily to religious restrictions, vegetarianism is widespread in India, but very few Indians follow a plant-based diet in which all animal products are avoided. Milk and other dairy products are avidly consumed across a large portion of the country. There are high levels of meat consumption in Indian states such as Goa, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Kerala. In Bengal, even Brahmins, whose dietary restrictions are pronounced, are allowed to eat fish.

India is the largest milk producer in the world by a good margin, having recently surpassed the entire European Union, and Pakistan ranks fourth. Milk is India’s leading agricultural commodity, produced on some 75 million dairy farms, most of which are quite small. Urban dwellers, being wealthier on average, tend to drink more milk than rural dwellers. Ghee, or clarified butter, is an essential component of many Indian dishes.

To appease Hindu conservatives, 18 states have banned the slaughter of cattle. Three states require permits for the slaughter of cattle and seven states allow cattle to be killed. These tough restrictions did not stop India being a major player in world beef markets. According to the USDA India was the largest exporter of beef in 2014, ahead of Brazil and Australia. India exports mostly buffalo meat which largely fall outside of the cattle bans, plus the animals are needed to keep India's huge domestic dairy industry going. Beef earns India more export dollars than basmati rice. Further, the country's leather trade accounts for 13 percent of the world market.

Sales of beef, lamb and chicken in India have all increased steadily over the past six years and rising wealth is a big reason for the growth. India's disposable income has surged 95 percent since 2009, and meat consumption has nearly doubled over that time.

Climate Change Ahead

India occupies 2.4 percent of the world's land area but supports close to 20 percent of the world's population. India is already experiencing a warming climate and 13 of the country’s hottest 15 years on record has occurred since 2002. The former union environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, admitted that India is the most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. For one, no country in the world has the demographic expansion which India is currently experiencing.

Around 60 percent of India's agriculture is rain-fed and the number of rainy days have decreased which lessens ground water recharging. India is subjected to irregular monsoons, flooding, and higher temperatures. The Himalayan glaciers are receding which impacts the perennial rivers of north-India. And rising sea-levels will adversely affect millions of people living along the country's 7,500 km of coast line.

The reason India is so vulnerable to climate change is because it is a large country with many living in poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of government planning to deal with complex weather systems. Climate change will exacerbate the risks faced by the country's poor, including storms, droughts and heat waves. Warming temperature trends over the last three decades have already been responsible for over 59,000 suicides throughout India.

High temperatures in the growing season reduce crop yields, putting economic pressure on India’s farmers. Crop losses could permeate throughout the economy, causing both farming and non-farming populations to face distress as food prices rise and agricultural labor demand falls. With no limit on global warming, about 30 percent of the region could see dangerous wet bulb temperatures above 31 degrees C (88 degrees F) on a regular basis within just a few decades.

By the end of the century, wide swaths of northern India, southern Pakistan and parts of Bangladesh may become so hot and humid it will be deadly just being outdoors. Such conditions would threaten up to a third of the 1.5 billion people living in these regions. Most of those at risk are poor farm workers, outdoor construction laborers, women and children.

The poor lack air conditioners, and up to 25 percent in of India’s population still has no access to electricity. In some areas that have been deforested for industry or agriculture, the disenfranchised may not even have very much shade. Women and girls from Dalit and other marginalised communities are disproportionately affected since they have to go outdoors to search for firewood, fetch water, wash clothes, and so on.

Floods and other natural disasters can affect affects crops, livestock, infrastructure, roads, electricity, communication links, and more. Abrupt climate change in South Asia may necessitate cooperation and fraternity with India's traditional rivals, China and Pakistan. And a belligerent Hindu raj posturing for votes may prove disastrous for tens of millions of climate refugees. India needs to remain democratic and collaborative with its neighbors to mitigate this unprecedented crisis.

The Indian diaspora will also be significantly impacted by climate change. A vast number of overseas Indians reside on islands and in countries below the sea level. Will India allow millions of climate migrants to return from overseas communities? Diaspora organizations should include climate change in their agenda and help communities in affected countries to become more climate resilient.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's emphasis on liberty, equality and fraternity points the way forward for India and its diaspora. As he stated, "These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.”