Demand-side regulations like mandating a certain percentage of building materials from fly ash in the building by-laws of cities could go a long way in increasing the utilisation of fly ash.

On climate change, the Congress has used all the right words and promised an action agenda to combat global warming. The BJP, on the other hand, is largely silent on the issue of climate change apart from the promise of achieving the goal of 175 GW renewable energy by 2022.

Sweeping waste under the carpet is a myopic waste management approach—sustained efforts are required, and it is this that the survekshan should rank in the future.

Multiple clearances are neither leading to the construction of environmentally sound buildings nor improving the environmental quality in urban areas

The year 2018 was full of declarations. In the country, some major policies and programmes were launched to tackle issues ranging from air pollution to plastic pollution.

The year laid down the governance blueprint for tackling some major environmental problems. But there was as much news to cheer as to worry about.

The existing overcapacity, coupled with increasing non-competitiveness of coal power plants, means that the country doesn’t need to construct new coal power plants till 2027.

Delhi faces the same challenge as Beijing did—what we lack is political willingness and public anger to force the govt to take hard action.

An estimated 25–30 trillion litres of water fell over the state, enough to cause floods even if Kerala’s ecosystem was in pristine condition

India is the fourth worst-affected country despite it contributing only 5% in causing climate change, while it is over 20% for the US and the EU.

The Survekshan ranks cities that do their waste management in a highly decentralised fashion poorly, despite their sustainable waste-management systems.

As Delhi and parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plains were getting engulfed in a thick cloud of dust last week, a question kept coming to my mind: Is there any similarity between the recent dust storms in India and the dust storms that hit the Great Plains of the United States [...]