News Digest
January 23, 2026
Climate change reason for ‘snow drought’ in Himachal
There was no significant snowfall this season in the high-altitude regions of Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur, reports The New Indian Express. The total snowfall area in the four river basins of Chenab, Beas, Ravi and Satluj reduced to 17,437.4 square kilometres in 2023-24, states a report by Himachal Pradesh State Centre on Climate Change. Environmentalist Guman Singh, coordinator of the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, said that this phenomenon is now known as ‘Snow Drought’ and is mainly the result of climate change and global warming. “Rising winter temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, are all effects of climate change, which may be responsible for this decline,” it elaborates. In the past two decades, there has been a steep decline in average snowfall in Shimla and Manali. Neither of the tourists’ destinations has received any snowfall so far this winter.
Vadhavan Port project will impact rights and livelihoods of 20,000 people
Fishing unions, farmers’ groups, and residents of Dahanu in Maharashtra have opposed the Vadhavan Port plan, for which around 571 hectares will be acquired to connect the port with road and railway connectivity, leading to the loss of agricultural land, forests and villages. Hindustan Times reports that Vadhavan Port, proposed 6.5 kilometres into the Arabian Sea off the Dahanu coast, involves reclamation of nearly 4,000 acres, a 10.5-km-long breakwater, and a restricted fishing zone where no fishing activity will be allowed up to 12 km. Claiming this would affect 20,000 people, locals and others marched four kilometres, on January 18, to the Palghar district collector’s office. “This coast has a unique rocky seabed that acts as a breeding ground. Once reclamation and breakwaters come up, the sea current will change and fishing will collapse,” said Narayan Patil, president of the Vadhavan Bandar Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti.
‘Massive projects in Tokyo destroying the city’s heart’
Award-winning architect Riken Yamamoto says massive projects in Tokyo are “destroying the heart” of the city. Bloomberg reports that Tokyo has long existed in a state of flux, with older buildings routinely razed in favour of modernised, earthquake-resilient structures, and recent years have seen the springing of sculptural glass-and-steel buildings with boutiques, offices and luxury condominiums throughout the city. “This is like a colony by rich people, ‘neoliberalism’ people,” said Yamamoto, recipient of the 2024 Pritzker Prize — often called the Nobel Prize of architecture, “What is being built is completely unusable by people in the community.” High-rise condominiums – called “tower mansions” – proliferated as a solution to the growing concentration of people. Yamamoto acknowledged that Tokyo would need to rebuild itself but objected to the makeover of the historic Tsukiji fish market, saying it “destroyed the heart, the very core place of Tokyo.”
Cycling can cut pollution in Global South but with policy support: Study
Research across India, Bangladesh and Ghana shows bicycles remain essential for low-income workers, but urban planning continues to prioritise cars, reports Down To Earth. Published in Nature Cities, the research examined bicycling in Delhi and Chennai in India, Dhaka in Bangladesh and Accra in Ghana – cities expanding rapidly with dense and mixed traffic, flat terrain, and climates marked by extreme heat, heavy rainfall and seasonal flooding. These reflect conditions across much of the low- and middle-income world, where transport emissions and air pollution are rising sharply. Bicycling remains largely invisible in policy, the researchers found. Planning documents assume that hardly anyone cycles and mention bicycles mainly in relation to recreation or beautification projects. “Additionally, the responsibility of bicycling infrastructure is spread among many different agencies,” the researchers wrote in a press statement.
Global water bankruptcy harming billions of people: Report
According to a UN report, the overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently as no one knows when the whole system might collapse, reports The Guardian. All life depends on water. The report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils, as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers and wetlands, which had led to water bankruptcy with many human water systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store water. Prof Kaveh Madani, who was the lead on the report, said while not every basin and country was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter global water risk. Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report added.
Now is the time for U.S. universities to step up on climate leadership
In a comment published by Reuters, Lou Leonard, well-known climate scholar and presently Dean, School of Climate, Environment, and Society at Clark University in Massachusetts, makes a plea for colleges to double down on climate education and leadership as President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew the United States from more than 60 international collaboration frameworks including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “The second Trump administration has succeeded in systematically dismantling federal policy and scientific infrastructure related to climate change: language scrubbed from government websites, funding and facilities for research curtailed, and regulatory efforts deeply unwound…But outside of the Washington bubble, support for climate action, renewable energy, greening communities, clean air/water, and preparation for extreme weather is strong and non-partisan. This is particularly true for a constituency that universities pay attention to most: youth,” he notes.
January 9, 2026
Champion of the Western Ghats, Madhav Gadgil, passes away
Noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil, renowned for his work on the Western Ghats, among other achievements, passed away in Pune on January 7 after a brief illness, reports The Times of India. One of Gadgil’s most widely-known and quoted works is his report submitted to the government as head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel in 2011. Before that, he founded the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru. In 2024, the United Nations Environment Programme awarded him the Champions of the Earth award under the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ category. “The government has surplus ways of justifying its actions, mainly the need for resources and development,” Gadgil told Down To Earth, expressing disappointment at the mining of rocks and its environmental devastation, “The Aravalli mining precedent will be used a blueprint for other parts of the country, and its evidence will come forth,”
Pollution issue central to citizens’ charter for Mumbai civic polls
In the run-up to the municipal elections in Mumbai, held after a delay for four years, citizens’ groups prepared a charter of demands, reports the Hindustan Times. In Malabar Hill’s D ward, residents framed their manifesto around environmental protection, heritage trees, pedestrian safety and unregulated redevelopment warning that unchecked construction and political apathy are pushing the area towards an ecological and public health crisis. Residents of Chandivali, an upscale area, put out their manifesto focused on improving liveability. The Govandi citizens’ manifesto foregrounds survival issues in one of Mumbai’s most vulnerable wards: Slum redevelopment, lack of consent and opaque civic processes. The Govandi Citizens’ Charter flags chronic problems ranging from unsafe housing, water shortages and sanitation failures to air pollution from the Deonar dumping ground and poor access to public healthcare and education. Community groups say they will seek written commitments from all candidates.
Revival of Maharashtra’s Kham river holds lesson for all urban rivers
Persistent efforts over the past few years have revived the Kham river which flows through the historic city of ‘Aurangabad’, now known as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, reports The Print. Kham was a river forgotten with its banks served as dumping grounds, and its waters were blackened by sewage and waste, even as the city around it drew tourists to UNESCO World Heritage Sites Ajanta and Ellora Caves. Kham’s revival began in 2016 when the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a local company Varroc Engineering, and the Cantonment Board identified a highly polluted stretch near a historical bridge. Armed with data, the city’s municipal corporation and all the stakeholders developed a phased five-year plan to revive the river. The Kham River Restoration Mission won the $100,000 St. Andrews prize for Environment last year – not only for reviving the river but also helping transform people’s attitude to it.
Climate disasters cost more than $120 billion in 2025 but not all counted
The review of extreme weather events shows that Asia accounted for four of the six most expensive climate disasters of 2025, reports the Independent. The analysis, carried out by charity Christian Aid, identified 10 climate-related disasters that each caused more than $1billion in damage, with combined losses exceeding $122 billion (£96bn). Most figures are based on insured losses, which tend to be highest in wealthier countries with high property values and more widespread insurance coverage. Many of the deadliest disasters elsewhere did not feature among the costliest events because financial losses were not insured. In many poorer countries, disasters with severe human consequences did not appear in global cost rankings at all. Flooding in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo killed hundreds of people, while a prolonged drought across Iran and West Asia has left up to 10 million people in Tehran facing the prospect of evacuation because of water shortages.
Tackling world’s foremost climate hazard: Flooding
In 2025, floods ravaged Southeast Asia, North America and the Middle East and were worsened by a variety of factors, states a report in Al Jazeera. “Flooding is a complex hazard. It occurs because of interactions between many variables related to weather, infrastructure, land cover and topography and other factors,” said Nasir Gharaibeh, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Texas A&M University. Climate change is a major factor in causing weather events, researchers say. “The specific triggers varied from city to city in 2025, yet a single, universal force magnified them all: Climate change which supercharges rainfall extremes,” said Pawan Bhattarai, assistant professor at the civil engineering department of Nepal’s Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan University. “Don’t try to fight floods; learn to live with them. Don’t try to control and restrict river flows, give rivers room to flow,” advised Ayyoob Sharifi, a professor and urban scientist at Hiroshima University in Japan.
New York City mayor pledges to improve lives of New Yorkers
As Zohran Mamdani took oath on January 1 as the New York City mayor, he acknowledged the task ahead, reports Associated Press. He will have to face the everyday responsibilities of running America’s largest city: Handling trash and snow and rats, while getting blamed for subway delays and potholes. Mamdani and other speakers hit on the theme that carried him to victory in the election – using government power to lift up the millions of people who struggle with the city’s high cost of living. “To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers’ lives,” he said. Later, he visited an apartment building in Brooklyn to announce he is revitalising a city office dedicated to protecting tenants and creating two task forces focused on housing construction.
Mayor Mamdani’s promise reflects essential role of buses in the US
The rising tide in voter enthusiasm for Zohran Mamdani may reflect a little-understood reality about just how essential buses are to most cities’ transportation systems, reports Bloomberg. Local buses provided 10.6 million trips across the US on the average day in 2024, according to the American Public Transportation Association, which is more than four times the number of people who fly in the US every day. Even in NYC, the subway hogs all the glory but the bus is the workhorse of the public transit system. About 1.1 million rides are taken every day on NYC buses. It’s the equivalent to the entire population of Boston commuting to and from work every day on the bus. If Mamdani achieves nothing else, he will have helped elevate the profile of these humble vehicles and demonstrated that they carry a powerful political message, especially when juxtaposed to the kind of “innovative” technologies politicians love to tout, from self-driving cars to flying taxis.