Almost 150 years ago, Christmas, aboard the SMS Gazelle, a mid-sized German warship that circumnavigated the globe in the late 19th century, was a day of activity. The vessel’s naval…
The role of trade and trade policy is increasingly being considered in discussions to further climate action. Trade will be in the spotlight at the upcoming UN climate conference in…
The Nilgiri Hills — A Kaleidoscope of People, Culture and Nature, edited by anthropologist Paul Hockings begins with what's now a pressing concern in the landscape, its changing nature. So…
Climate change is undermining the achievement of nearly all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said, which adds that existing science…
In the village Tuna that lies by the sea in Kachchh, Gujarat, Razak bhai sat watching the rain clouds gather in the sky. Razak bhai is a potter and one…
It was a long day here, in Kachchh, when we were out in search of Gujarat’s indigenous breed of sheep, the Patanwadi. There are less than 5,000 sheep of this…
When the Earth Commission released its third paper on earth system boundaries in 2023, one element stood out as distinct — the introduction of “justice” into the definition of planetary…
As the Karnataka assembly elections captured the nation's attention, another equally important democratic process was taking place silently in Uttar Pradesh's 760 municipalities. The state held its municipal council elections…
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has focussed on climate change as the primary theme in its Report on Currency and Finance (RCF) for 2022-23, a theme-based annual report on…
Every few weeks, 53-year-old agricultural entomologist Rajendra Hegde addresses a large gathering in Bengaluru, where he puts forth a proposition: imagine walking up to your rooftops or balconies and foraging…
Armed with the idea that shifting cultivation is primitive and unsustainable, based on a certain narrative she was exposed to in the academic world, Assam-born researcher Joli Rumi Borah had…
Buoyed by a “geographer’s heart”, environmental geographer Ruth DeFries started using satellite data in the 1990s to generate global vegetation maps to feed climate models. Unraveling drivers of deforestation in…
Warm and cold climatic spells in the Arctic, over the past 1000 years, imprinted on India’s monsoon fluctuations during that period, a climate reconstruction study finds. Warm Arctic conditions were…
The 2022 Assam floods, following record-breaking rains, were the worst that the state has seen in the last decade. Soon-after, some districts faced a drought-like situation forcing farmers to work…
Climate change can significantly alter hydropower generation capacity, notes a study published by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar. The study that appeared on February 17, 2023, claimed that…
Domestic livestock differ from wild herbivores in their impacts on soil carbon, and ultimately on climate, a new study shows. And given the increasing use of veterinary antibiotics on domestic…
Climate-driven food and water insecurity is expected to increase with increased warming, reiterates the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Water scientist Aditi Mukherji and one of the…
The old houses of the Kashmir Valley are living examples of climate-resilient and sustainable architecture. When a massive flood hit the valley in 2014, a major part of downtown Srinagar,…
An undated video believed to be from an Indian forest recently went viral. A tiger, sitting quietly among trees observing something in the distance, roars and darts towards its target.…
Devsharan Patel, 53, a farmer in Dhatura, a village in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district, is on his way to his field. He carries a battery-operated pesticide sprayer on his shoulder.…
