Botanist Pervaiz Dar spent a good amount of time in 2012 and 2017 squatting and walking along roadsides in Kashmir, including at mountain pass Sinthan Top, surveying invasive alien plant…
The implementation of nature-based solutions, or NbS — a hotly debated concept that has gained traction in recent years — is seen by many policymakers as a potential means for…
Reflected in key goals and targets, ecological connectivity will be decisive, as countries move to implement the freshly minted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which, among its key targets, calls for…
Ambitious and quantitative targets, with a focus on tackling the drivers of biodiversity decline, should be reflected in a successful Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), says Sandra Diaz, Argentine ecologist and…
As Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity debate the issue of access and benefit-sharing from digital sequence information on genetic sources (DSI) at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15), a…
After multiple postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments began the final round of negotiations at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Canada to thrash out a landmark deal…
When diatom hunter Karthick Balasubramanian was invited to a research expedition on the Blue Mountains of Mizoram, little did he know the trek would result in producing the first dataset…
A clutch of recent modeling efforts suggests pathways that India could take to move to a fully renewable energy-driven electricity system by 2050, but concerns about cost and storage remain.…
Methane-monitoring satellites that zoom in on sources of the climate-warming gas show that landfills contributed to more than 25% of methane emissions in Mumbai and 6% in Delhi. In Pune,…
Meeting India’s clean air and energy goals could substantially reduce anaemia prevalence among women of reproductive age, according to a study that links exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to…
“When you switch the fan on, the air inside the room blows like fire,” 50-year-old Dolena Khatoon says with an emphasis on the word aagun which means ‘fire’ in the…
While the concentration of sulphur dioxide (SO2), an atmospheric pollutant with health and climate impacts, shows a decreasing trend in India in the recent decade (2010-2020), compared to previous decades,…
Famed for its tea, Assam’s tea garden records are giving scientists a glimpse into past rainfall changes in northeast India, plagued by scattered and spotty historical rainfall data. For 12…
A recent study that traces the potential route of microplastics from Indian rivers to the sea finds that microplastics in the Bay of Bengal are mainly pumped in by rivers…
“No one was willing to buy the argument that mangroves buffer against tsunami,” environmental economist Saudamini Das recalls the research and debate surrounding storm protection services of mangroves following the…
Between October 2019 and January 2020, a group of mosquito hunters was carefully nurturing mosquito larvae in makeshift labs on the Lakshadweep archipelago in the Arabian Sea, patiently waiting until…
“Every time, the story is one-sided. Politicians often use ‘climate change’ as an excuse (in disasters),” climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll said to a clique of legislators in the coastal…
Exposure to flooding from cyclone storm surges, such as those brought on by cyclones the size of supercyclone Amphan, is “extremely likely to increase” in the future in South Asia…
In April-May 2019, extreme severe cyclone Fani, with its 11-day lifespan on ocean and land, became the longest-lived cyclone to spawn in the Bay of Bengal. It rapidly intensified from…
With heatwaves setting in early, stretching on longer and with more intensity, heat action plans now need to account for the changing heat risks and differing vulnerability of exposed population…
