People walk on a dusty road in the town of Byrnihat, Meghalaya, March 29, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Two-year-old Sumaiya Ansari, a resident of India’s Byrnihat town, ranked the world’s most polluted metropolitan area by Swiss Group IQAir, was battling breathing problems for several days before she was hospitalised in March and given oxygen … Read more
Sunflower blooms at Ooranvila | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement How does a day spent around sunflowers and marigold blooms sound? Or a walk around a millet farm or angling for fish? Throw in a pet show and some healthy food. Interested? Then head to Ooranvila for an experience of all these and more. The village, … Read more
Green Humour | Photo Credit: Rohan Chakravarty Green Humour | Photo Credit: Rohan Chakravarty On April 14, Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned rocket tourism company, launched six women into space. The 10-minute spaceflight included the pop star Katy Perry and Bezos’ partner, Lauren Sánchez. It was the first all-women trip to space in more than … Read more
Using solar energy may be better for the environment than burning through fossil fuels, but the process still isn’t exactly perfect. Making silicon-based solar panels is energetically expensive and we still don’t know what to do with the silicon once the panels are done being used. There is a cheaper way to make solar panels, … Read more
There’s a harmless addiction that many people share: knuckle-cracking. That ‘pop’, better than the one from squeezing bubble wrap, results from the synovial fluid between your joints releasing a small bubble of nitrogen when you twist or compress your fingers or toes. It’s also a reminder of the centrality of nitrogen to life. The fifth-most … Read more
Aghanashini Estuary in Uttara Kannada is one of the Ramsar sites. | Photo Credit: file photo Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Dr. Musonda Mumba, on Sunday said that India has more Ramsar sites compared to China. Dr. Mumba, participating in the Sinhasi Social Impact Conference 2 – Wetland Conservation and Climate Change, … Read more
Climate experts have proposed urgent measures, including paid heat leave, free water ATMs at labour hubs and legal recognition for the ‘right to cool’, to protect India’s informal workforce during the extreme summer months. More than 80% of Delhi’s workers, including street vendors, construction labourers and ragpickers, face severe health risks and income loss due … Read more
A drone view of the house belonging to Pasijah and other buildings, surrounded by mangrove planted by her, in Rejosari Senik, February 19, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Rejosari Senik is a hamlet in the Demak district of Indonesia’s Central Java province. In the 1970s, the distance between the hamlet and the nearest shoreline, on … Read more
File photo of the NHPC’s 2,000 MW Lower Subansiri project being constructed in Arunachal Pradesh. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR The NHPC’s plan to start generating electricity from the 2000 megawatt Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project (LSHP) has triggered downstream impact worries in Assam, specifically because an independent reservoir management authority recommended by an Environment … Read more
Farmers from anywhere in Karnataka can participate in the santhe if they register themselves with the KRRS in advance. The organisers are planning to give priority for the first 100 enrolments. | Photo Credit: Murali Kumar K In an unique move to help farmers in an unequal agricultural market, the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS … Read more
On April 13 this year, a group of residents gathered in north Chennai to discuss the problems arising out of the first waste-to-energy plant. They were stoutly against the plant. T.K. Shanmugham, president of the Federation of North Chennai Residents’ Welfare Associations, says residents posted their views on social media after Re Sustainability, the company … Read more
A citizen forum in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district has opposed the Odisha government’s move to allot 100 acres of land in proximity of Similipal Biosphere for a private hotel. | Photo Credit: BISWARANJAN ROUT A citizen forum in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district has opposed the Odisha government’s move to allot 100 acres of land in proximity of Similipal Biosphere … Read more
Attention of the highest order, they say, is prayer. And our prayers have been misdirected for a while now. We have forgotten as a species that we are merely a thread in nature’s web. Here are 10 books, old and new; meditations on walking, observing, and simply, being. Reminders that the earth and what it … Read more
Priya Ranganathan’s first encounter with a Myristica swamp was back in 2019 when she was working as a research assistant at the Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) on a hydro-ecology project. As part of a field trip with other researchers, she was exploring the Aghanashini, one of the rivers … Read more
Smoke rises from a coal-powered steel plant at Hehal village near Ranchi. File | Photo Credit: AP The Union Environment Ministry should roll back its 2015 policy mandating all of India’s 537 coal-fired plants to install a class of equipment called Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) in order to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Instead, it … Read more
Mouse deer at its enclosure at Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in Visakhapatnam. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Tiny paws are pattering about at the wild dog enclosure, while little hooves are finding their first steps at the Indian gaur section of Indira Gandhi Zoological Park. The green natural premises of the zoo park is alive … Read more
A frame grab provided by the Schmidt Ocean Institute shows a colossal squid, or Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, in its natural habitat, during an Ocean Census flagship expedition in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean | Photo Credit: AP A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep … Read more
Earth Day | Green Humour by Rohan Chakravarty on the rediscovery of an ancient velvet worm species in Arunachal Pradesh
A man walks through floodwater after heavy rain caused flooding in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 29, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters Europe faced its most widespread flooding last year since 2013, with 30% of the continent’s river network hit by significant floods, scientists said on Tuesday, as fossil fuel-driven climate change continued to prompt … Read more
The Sterlite Plant in Thoothukudi. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu With Sterlite Copper shifting its machinery out of Thoothukudi, a new question emerges: Is it a gain for other States? The answer depends on your viewpoint — as a citizen, vendor, contractor, activist, pacifist, community leader, or administrator. The smelter at Thoothukudi was shut … Read more
Worthy of a better deal: Farmworkers harvesting small onions at a village near Chettikulam in Perambalur district. To help growers get a better price, auction of small onions was introduced at the Small Onion Market Complex at Chettikulam. But it did not last long. A section of the farmers blames a syndicate of traders for … Read more
Arshiya Bose feels that a conversation she had in Coorg, back in 2011, when she was pursuing her PhD at Cambridge, was a “pivotal moment” in her journey towards creating Black Baza Coffee. During her fieldwork to understand the impact of global sustainability certifications on farmers, she met the mother of a local grower from … Read more
Commuters wait under the scorching for buses near the Egmore Railway Station on April 15, 2025. | Photo Credit: R. Ragu Residents across the city are struggling to cope with stifling afternoons and a surge in humidity that’s turning daily work into exhausting ordeals. Meteorologists noted that sea breeze, a source of relief from peaking … Read more
Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha submits a memorandum with a charter of demands to the officials of the Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation in Mysuru on Saturday. | Photo Credit: M.A. Sriram Farmers gathered in front of the office of the Managing Director of Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation (CESC) in Mysuru on Saturday to press for their … Read more
GUWAHATI An informal network of individuals and organisations working together to foster the knowledge and practice of ecological restoration of natural ecosystems in India is releasing a first-of-its-kind seed germination database on Wednesday (April 16, 2025). This free-access database, an initiative of the Ecological Restoration Alliance-India (ERA-I), offers more than 1,000 germination techniques for 465 … Read more
Jagadale, S. R., and, Shaikh, J. M, ‘Governmentality and Marketing System Failure: The Case of Stubble Burning and Climate Change in Neoliberal India’, Journal of Macromarketing, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1177/02761467251318608 Come November, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is often clouded in a pall of pollution. The cessation of monsoon winds from the preceding four months and a drop in … Read more
Last month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its first Green Status assessment, a relatively new global standard of measurement envisioned to complement the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, for the lion (Panthera leo). And it does not paint a happy picture for the big cat. According to the assessment, the … Read more
At the centre of the controversy over 400 acres of land in Kancha Gachibowli are multiple stakeholders: the Telangana government, University of Hyderabad, students, environmental activists, and political parties. Each views the land differently — as resource, sanctuary, asset, or symbol. File | Photo Credit: PTI A blind spot is a gap in our field … Read more
Leptobrachium aryatium, a new-to-science frog recorded from a reserve forest on the edge of Guwahati. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement GuwahatiA study spanning 21 years has yielded a new species of frog named after an Assam college that helped a locality shed its identity as a hub of country liquor production. Guwahati’s Aryanagar used to … Read more
Since Donald Trump regained the U.S. presidency, he has coveted Greenland. Trump has insisted that the U.S. will control the island, currently an autonomous territory of Denmark, and if his overtures are rejected, perhaps seize Greenland by force. During a recent congressional hearing, senators and expert witnesses focused on Greenland’s strategic value and its natural … Read more