THE AIR IN THE ROOM Delhi’s air problem is not a mystery. It has been studied, modelled, mapped, and legislated over for two decades. The Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) IS a statutory body established in 2021 with powers overriding all state agencies. It exists precisely…
For decades, environmental protection and poverty reduction were often seen as opposing priorities, as though supporting one meant sacrificing the other. Forests were these fragile spaces, supposedly safe only if people stayed out, while raising rural incomes was some separate struggle. But recent research tells a different story. According to the International Forestry Resources and…
THE SOUND OF PROGRESS There is something deeply honest about wind energy. Unlike a coal plant, it needs no fuel. Unlike a dam, it does not submerge valleys. It simply spins quietly, relentlessly and converts movement into electricity. On June 15, 2026, the Global Wind Day Conference convened in Goa under the theme ‘Wind Energy:…
Vimla Bahuguna (1932- 2025), the veteran environmentalist, combined grounded constructive work with far-reaching sociopolitical activism. From her home in the Himalayas, she built up resistance to deforestation, big dams, destructive mining, commercial forestry, violence and abuse. During the 1970s,along with thousands of local women, she created the Chipko movement, which reverberated across the globe. Today,…
THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED Indore, June 13, 2026. Eleven nations. One room. One unanimous vote. The 16th BRICS Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting produced the Indore Declaration. It was a farmer-centric compact, adopted without dissent, binding nearly half the world’s agricultural land under a shared commitment to food security, climate resilience, and seed sovereignty. Under India’s…
Every AI query has a physical footprint – and it is measured in something far more scarce than electricity The query you send to a chatbot seems like nothing. Not using any paper, fuel or obvious resources in any way. However, behind your query, deep inside some climate-controlled data centre full of buzzing computers, there’s…
Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Prize, and 51 million Trees The Child Who Was Told Not to Disturb the Fig Tree In the hills of Nyeri, in central Kenya, a fig tree grew near the home of a young girl’s family. Her grandmother told her it was sacred and must not be disturbed. As a child,…
Climate change is not something that will happen someday. It is happening now. It is changing the way people live in India. The temperature is getting higher, the air is getting thicker because of the humidity, and the heat is staying longer every year. This is a problem for a lot of people, especially those…
In Geneva, on the sidelines of the WTO Trade and Environment Week 2026, India did something that would have seemed improbable a decade ago. Officials from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change walked into a multilateral forum and presented India not as a developing country seeking climate exemptions, but as one showcasing a…
Every winter, Delhi’s air turns into a slow emergency. Children are kept indoors. Hospitals fill up. AQI readings scroll past catastrophic on national television. This June, the Union Cabinet approved a ₹9,585 crore scheme to replace approximately 2.07 lakh ageing trucks and buses in the Delhi-NCR region with BS-VI or cleaner alternatives — a funded…
