Hello all you wonderful supporters (across four continents now!). Hope this Friday isn’t being too hard on you all. If not, here is a photo of a stunning Mediterranean coastline:
Not really, we’re kidding. This is the Makran coastal highway of Balochistan in Pakistan, overlooking the Arabian sea, not too far from Mumbai. You are looking at the Makran mountains that extend onwards to Iranian baloch territories. Here is a stunning ride through video of this region.
Awe inspiring isn’t it? Such stunning land and waterscapes are peppered all across the South Asian region, and especially the Hindu Kush Himalayas. We even added some such images to our judicial handbook, which was published last monsoon.
Recently, we began exploring the possibility of stocking some physical prints and the entire thought + execution process was, well, dauntingly illuminating - and so we decided to share it with you all (since a big part of this newsletter has been to share snippets of our journey as a nonprofit).
Hot take - it almost felt like what an MBA/graduate class on nonprofits would
First, a photograph of what we executed at the end of the journey:
We scoured through close to 3,000 different court orders to arrive at this handbook and that number has already risen up to 8,000 as we get closer to publishing the second edition covering Himalayan environmental law from June, 2021 through to May, 2023.
Even on a conservative estimate, we are looking at the very least, about 24,000 pages worth of legalese already, all towards understanding and sharing how environmental law unfolding in the third pole today.
And that was just the beginning - once we created a soft copy, we realised that it was in A4 format, which isn’t the most ideal of formats, especially if you go to a physical bookstore. Converting that document to an A5 format was as laborious as shelling a (really big) bag full of pine nuts - banal but gruelling. Actually impossible but for team work.
And then there was the entire dilemma of why print at all? It ruins the planet! But what if we considered this to be a zine, or a physical testament to our journey till now - the optimist within said. Or what if this was a high quality product, a piece of merchandise or a coffee table book?
This is how Anton Hangschlitt described his photozine called “Where we are”:
Exploring, documenting, interpreting the spaces where we are on a daily basis. We pass through them – unaware of the silent beauty.
Here’s a photo for context:
We were honestly quite taken by just how much work went into creating this work - FSC certified 120 GSM paper with 60 photographs shot on CineStill 800T film, for an asking price of 24 Euros. Both those ‘ingredients’ are outrageously expensive and that was simply not an option.
But ponder we did - what would an artistic parallel look like in the environmental law world? Do we need more visual mediums to show what is going so terribly wrong in our world today? To what lengths would we have to go to actually claim to be planet friendly (yes, we are talking about Algae ink)? Should there be more zines in the nonprofit world? If ATREE can do it, why can’t we?
For one, legal writing is notoriously hard to make fun, when it comes to a wider audience (not everyone is delighted at the prospect of unearthing the latest developments in climate change law :P). On the other hand, text accompanied with photographs can be a far more interesting prospect:
What if we looked at it from the perspective of this ‘product’ funding our day to day operations? Surely, 24 Euros or thereabouts would be enough to cover our electricity bills for an entire year.
All contributions go towards keeping our lights on, literally. Conceptualised and printed in the third pole.
Or …
All contributions go towards buying water and soil testing kits for our ongoing advocacy work.
This is how the folks at Black Baza Coffee are looking at this issue:
And then came the printers. Oh, the printers. Absolutely no one was willing to actually work with the document in soft copy. They all wanted a full and final version, ready to print and even then, nobody really hand any incentive to look at a document as a work of art, or a product that could mean something bigger. After days and days of searching, we found an amazing printer who knew how to work with softwares such as CorelDraw and InDesign and created exactly what we had in mind, down to the millimeter:
Anyways, what we wanted to share was the entire process behind a book - complete with all the moments of dilemma, inspiration, frustration, logistics, finances, high theory and everything in between.
The handbook of course exists as a sample copy for now - till the time we churn out a far more comprehensive second edition this monsoon. Let us see where this can go, theoretically, logistically and importantly, legally (any good Chartered Accountant recommendations? :P).
Regards,
Himalayan Advocacy Center
We’re on LinkedIN, YouTube, Instagram & Twitter! Hit us up anywhere with your thoughts or simply reply to this email - looking forward to collaborating with you! It would mean the world to us if you’d share this newsletter with people around you - the welcome email is always going to come with some goodies!
Postscript:
As you may know, we are a small non profit in the environment + law space located in the Indian Himalayas. We are completely bootstrapped, try to run super lean and yet make it a point to pay all our interns a fair stipend. This means no foreign funding and no fancy headquarters - just a small community - of which you all are an integral part - in the long run we hope!
Whats more - we, at the Center, are determined to localise efforts for the planet, without compromising on the best that the law has to offer. If you have the means, and want to support a committed local undertaking, please do consider contributing to our corpus.
A 10K INR investment for example, would mean a 100 prints of what you saw earlier, in the hands of judges, magistrates and representatives of the third pole (only Indian citizens having a domestic bank account can donate as of now).
We hope to pleasantly surprise you with detailed information on where you money has been spent!