Climate Change | How climate change affects cities

The way forward for urban local bodies to finance climate action

Cities in India are at a preliminary stage of climate actions. A 126-cities survey showed that urban local bodies are spending two-three percent, or less, of their budgets on climate-related activities. Only 50 out of 4,800 cities are preparing or…

‘Developing countries are struggling to get climate-related finance’

As the global powers work out the finance needed to address devastating climate change impacts in the developing world, for which the…

Lesser-known world summits for the planet and people

Away from the international glare of the annual climate summit, other equally important global conferences were held through October-November – the UN…

They woke us up to climate change, and an equitable world

Over the past decades, multilateral agencies and international organisations drew forces together to conduct studies that led to path-breaking reports on environment…

Pune’s growth story reminds us that nature does not send an invoice

As Pune amalgamates larger non-urban areas into the city limits, expanding in all directions, the frenzy of development has also meant fast-depleting…

‘Urban planning tends to be driven by money, not natural ecosystem’

Once known as a salubrious city with abundant green, Pune has transformed into a crowded and chaotic city grappling with rapid urbanisation,…

Wayanad’s lessons on how not to manufacture ecological disasters

The 572-millimetres rain in two days triggering massive landslides in Wayanad shook the nation. Beyond the rising death toll and large-scale devastation…

From ground zero: Human decisions worsened climate tragedy in Wayanad

Even as the challenge of rehabilitating the landslide-affected looms large, the disaster raises other issues. Once a dense forest, Wayanad now has tea and coffee plantations, tourist resorts, road projects through the mountain ranges, and mono-culture crops like rubber whose…

Dehradun model of development is unsustainable, ecologically hazardous

Once a quaint hill station nestled in the Himalayas, cradling many public institutions of learning and research, Dehradun has seen rapid growth…

India’s changing monsoon patterns demand shifting gears in preparedness

There is empirical evidence to show that changes in the monsoon or heavier rainfall is not merely our imagination. The tehsil-level study…