Articles & Op-Eds

There is no contradiction between increasing coal consumption in India and implementing a just transition in the coal districts and states. On March 28, 2022, an extremely important and unstarred question was asked by Priyanka Chaturvedi, member, Rajya Sabha, which was replied to by Pralhad Joshi, Union minister of coal. [...]

We have entered a new age of heat extremes. Concrete and glass-heavy urban buildings are a major hazard India is searing. Large parts of the country are in the grips of unbearable heat and heatwaves. March this year was the hottest March on record, and March-April has witnessed a record [...]

Another arms race will divert resources Another arms race will divert resources from poverty, pandemic and environment crisis. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called on the US to increase its domestic oil and gas production to cut-off imports from Russia. While new oil [...]

The climate watcher has produced nothing for the general public, except for a press release and a set of headlines. Scientists are good at science but bad at communicating it to the masses. This is precisely why the gap between the scientific understanding of the climate crisis and policy responses [...]

How to read biennial forest surveys? The best way is decadal data produced by same methods India State of Forest Reports (ISFRs) are published every two years. And, every ISFR shows an increase in the forest cover compared to the previous one. ISFR 2021, released last week, too shows an [...]

Who’d have guessed that a 49.6°C temperature would be recorded somewhere in a normally frigid Canada? Now wildfires, caused by the extreme heat, have reduced its tiny town of Lytton to ash. To put things in perspective, the maximum temperature ever recorded in Delhi is 48°C. For decades, scientists have [...]

Exactly three years back, single-use plastics (SUPs) took centre stage in India when PM Modi, on June 5, 2018, announced that the country would completely phase out these products by 2022. Now, barely a year before the deadline, the Union environment ministry has issued a draft notification to impose a [...]

A storm is brewing on the climate diplomacy front that India needs to navigate carefully to avoid becoming a fall guy. The issue at hand is the pledge by countries to achieve “net zero” emission by the mid-century. Over 120 countries have already announced their intention to achieve carbon neutrality [...]

The private sector in India has traditionally avoided engagement on climate issues publicly. But this seems to be changing. On November 5, 2020, 24 leading companies signed a ‘declaration of the private sector on climate change’ to tackle the climate crisis. This is an important beginning as the private sector [...]

Railways fascinate me. Professionally, I advocate for a massive expansion of rail networks to address the air pollution and climate crisis. Rail transport is not only highly energy efficient compared to road and air transport, it can also completely shift to renewable energy. It will, therefore, play a significant role [...]

‘We need to act for the Amazon and act for our planet,’ said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when fires ravaged the Amazon rainforest in August 2019. He was joined by many Western countries in preaching the virtues of protecting the ‘global common’ for combating climate change. But the Western [...]

The world is not only suffering because of Covid and economic distress. It’s also reeling due to climate disasters. The year 2020 is likely to be one of the three warmest years on record, and 2011-20 will be the warmest decade on record. 2020 has witnessed increasing wildfires, new extreme [...]