Cities and Towns News

“Sun’s out, snakes out!” exclaimed Shuayb Ahmed, and Yatin Kalki as they jumped to action. Ahmed, an independent snake rescuer, had received a frantic call from a woman who spotted…

The year 2021 was one of swinging national sentiment in India. The year started with a misplaced optimism that India had overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, even while many other countries…

Rooftop solar – where solar panels are placed on top of buildings – is an important aspect of India's clean energy journey. India has set a target of 500 gigawatts…

Indian cities have faced many environmental challenges this year, including extreme weather events. The recent rains in Chennai, have demonstrated that cities need to invest more time and money to…

Piyush Ranjan Rout is an urban planner based in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of the eastern Indian coastal state of Odisha. He had installed a 1kW off-grid solar panel on…

There are heavy rains in the south Indian city of Chennai and the metropolis has flooded, bringing back memories of the of December 2015 floods. Mongabay-India talked with Jayshree Vencatesan,…

Bengaluru, the fourth most populous metropolitan city in India, is a favoured market for real estate developers. This has, consequently, led to concerns about the city's environmental health. Several studies…

Harasa Bhoi, in her early 40s, is a vegetable seller in Odisha’s religious town of Puri. She owns a small shack on the Grand Road, locally called the ‘Bada Danda,’…

City parks and residential gardens have a unique functional microbiome with more potential human and plant pathogens, and fewer plant-symbionts than neighbouring natural ecosystems, according to a study that unpacks…

Punjab’s former princely state, Faridkot has over a thousand jamun and mango trees that are very old and produce fruits every summer that are a feast for birds. But birds…

Delhi recently launched its draft Master Plan 2041- a vision document for the city’s development over the next two decades.The draft plan envisages making Delhi environmentally sustainable, liveable, and economically…

The Konkan Fruit Fest (KFF) is an initiative of Miguel Braganza and his team from Botanical Society of Goa, to preserve endangered food biodiversity by providing fruit growers a forum…

In September 2019, Pune city, in India’s western state of Maharashtra, witnessed heavy rainfall and unprecedented flooding. There was widespread destruction of property and loss of lives. Researchers, civil society…

More than half the world’s population is projected to live in cities by 2050. This raises the question about the availability of green spaces and resources. The Covid-19 lockdown rekindled…

Shilpa Gayen shudders to recall the moment when she almost lost her life after strong winds blowing in her village brought down her mud house on May 26, the day…

With Chandigarh's growing reputation as nature’s paradise, every aspect of this man-made creation, originally spread over 47 blocks of 246 acres each, vindicates the visionary thinking of the early planners.…

“There were about 25 boats parked in one place. The tide was so high and the wind so powerful that they crashed into one another and broke. And when I…

When a strong, 6.4 magnitude earthquake shook Assam on April 28 this year, there was panic and mayhem. The earth cracked near the epicentre in the Sonitpur district, and so…

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…

Combining data from ground-based techniques and remote monitoring using airborne devices offers new opportunities to monitor nature-based solutions (NbS) to mitigate floods, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, storm surges and coastal erosion,…