India
Field Notes from India: Climate Adaptation from the Ground Up
Two days with climate educators in Ahmedabad, India changed my understanding and appreciation of climate resilience.
I spent last week in New Delhi, participating in the conference, India 2047: Building a Climate-Resilient Future. Academics, civil society, and government officials were divided into groups focusing on science, health, labor, and the built environment. It was fascinating to explore the daunting challenges India will face as many of its regions confront daily temperatures …
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CONTINUE READINGNot The Winds Of Change We Wanted
Bombay’s recent air quality crisis shows us our future
For several years, India’s capital of Delhi has been synonymous with awful air quality: just living there is the equivalent of smoking nearly 2,000 cigarettes a year. So it shocked me when the Indian Express reported that last week, Bombayās air was even worse than Delhiās. Delhiās AQI last week was an abysmal 263; but …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Policy in India
Whatās Happening in the Worldās Second Largest Country?
India is home to 1.39 billion people, just below China but growing faster. By some projections, it will have the second largest economy in the world by 2050. In terms of climate policy, however, it doesnāt get nearly as much attention as China. Thatās understandable in terms of India’s current carbon emissions, which are now …
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CONTINUE READINGWeaponizing Water in Kashmir
Indiaās legal moves on water put Pakistan on edge
A month after Indiaās move to exert more direct control over Jammu & Kashmir, the Indian state that occupies part of the larger Kashmir region, the country is also now in a position to exert control – in both illegal and legal ways – over important river waters that Pakistan relies upon to sustain people …
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CONTINUE READINGGetting Lost In The Woods?
New Study From India Points to Dangers From Forestry Sector Emissions Trading
Despite the Trump Administrationās dedication to melting the planet, the rest of the world is gamely pushing ahead with implementing the Paris Accord, and that means programs like United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The two are linked, because …
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CONTINUE READING…For Fighting Over
Nuclear-Armed India Announces Water Cut-Off To Nuclear-Armed Pakistan
Uh-Oh: Union minister Nitin Gadkari in a tweet has confirmed that India would ‘choke’ the water supply to Pakistan in light of the Pulwama attack. The move comes in the backdrop of the February 14 attack on CRPF convoy in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, which resulted in the death of 40 CRPF personnel. India …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Carbon Emission Upanishad
Can Pseudoscience Be Used To Foster Climate Action?
The new issue of Science has a disturbing but unsurprising report on science under India’s Hindu nationalist government: The most widely discussed talk at the Indian Science Congress, a government-funded annual jamboree held in Jalandhar in January, wasnāt about space exploration or information technology, areas in which India has made rapid progress. Instead, the talk …
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CONTINUE READINGMore Tree-Huggers, Please
The Anti-Environmentalist Epithet Actually Derives From India’s Great Environmental Justice Movement
If you want to insult an environmentalist, the standard go-to is to dismiss them as a ātree-hugger.ā But where does the term come from? The answer might surprise you: The term ātree-huggerā originated not as an insult but as a protest tactic. It is said to date back to 1730, when a village of Bishnois …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat is Environmental Justice, Anyway?
New UCLA Law Review Article Attempts To Connect It To Community Legal Empowerment
I have a new piece out in the UCLA Law Review Discourse. Here’s the abstract: This Article considers Gitanjali Nain Gillās recent bookĀ Environmental Justice in India, the first comprehensive look at Indiaās National Green Tribunal.Ā Indiaās environmental crisisāmajor international surveys highlight its severe environmental degradationāis of interest to the global public, for no progress on …
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CONTINUE READINGGood News From India
While weāve been obsessing about Trump, India has made great strides in renewable energy.
We get so focused on the problems in our own country that itās easy to lose track of whatās happening globally. It turns out that while weāve been mired in our own travails, India has been making remarkableprogress on renewable energy. What happens in India has tremendous significance. It is now the most populous country …
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