As the Second World War ended in the mid-1940s, an important scientific breakthrough was to add a strong weapon to the global fight against malaria. The industrial synthesis of chloroquine,…
Mongabay: Welcome to Mongabay sessions. I have with me, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, India's former Environment Minister and currently a Member of Parliament. Mr. Ramesh is an engineer and an economist…
Institutionalised conservation efforts in India started with the enactment of the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972 and the launch of the Project Tiger - to conserve the apex predator and…
In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, I was working with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in its global headquarters at…
After Joe Biden took charge as the United States president, climate change is returning as a pillar of its collaboration with India. It emerged in the recently-held online meeting of…
Investment in infrastructure is the most important focus area in the Union Budget 2021-2022 unveiled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, and it is for this reason that…
In 1949, George Orwell published his dystopian view of what the world would be in 1984 in his novel by the same name. For India, 1984 was a disturbing year,…
The first case of COVID-19 infection was officially reported in India in January 2020 from Thrissur in Kerala. In December 2020, a 90-year-old Britisher became the world’s first person to…
Farmers camping at the borders of India’s national capital have refused to budge until new farm laws recently brought in by the Indian government are repealed and they have an…
In 1991, the year when India launched its economic reforms, I travelled to the Narmada valley. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) – the anti-Sardar Sarovar dam movement – had organised…
The rains have eased in Thrissur in Kerala. The sun stays longer than overcast skies. Flowers have opened bright - different sizes, different colours. The pollinators are busy, moving from…
In recent weeks, the situation in India was a throwback to two historical events. The sight of millions of internal migrants cycling and using any mode of transport to return…
As the summer sets in over India every year, there is an announcement that the country waits for – on how the coming monsoon will fare. Much hinges on this…
Kesavan Unni caters for weddings and social events for a living. He also organises stage decorations and associated logistics for these events. He does not call himself an event manager,…
What is a forest? At present, in India, there is no clear nationally-accepted definition of ‘forest’. States are responsible for determining their definition of forests. In its meeting in September…
On January 27, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement announced the two winners for 2020. Gretchen C. Daily and Pavan Sukhdev were selected for their work on the global impact…
The Rajiv Gandhi government had passed its prime when I started practising journalism in 1987. Even though by then the political situation was getting difficult for Gandhi, he had laid…
The national elections dominated the happenings of 2019. So did a string of floods, drought and cyclones. In our second year of publication, we at Mongabay-India extensively covered how environmental…
Greta Thunberg was not born when the international climate change negotiations started in 1992. She, along with more than 40% of the world population, were born after the complex negotiations…
From the time settled agriculture started on the Indian subcontinent millennia ago, there was a dependence on the calendrical reliability of the rains as they sustained the crops. Every year…
