Climate & Energy

Nearly a third of India's coastline is eroding, according to government survey data, threatening fishing communities, coastal infrastructure and mangrove ecosystems even as the government promotes a Blue Economy policy centred on port expansion, aquaculture and offshore energy. This piece examines whether growth ambitions for the coast are being reconciled with the physical reality of a retreating shoreline.

India's push for run-of-the-river hydropower across Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh promises clean energy and revenue for hill states, but a string of disasters, from Kedarnath in 2013 to Joshimath's subsidence in 2023, has exposed the ecological cost of large-scale construction in seismically active, geologically young terrain. This piece weighs energy needs against mounting evidence of irreversible damage.

India has issued heat action plans for over a hundred cities since Ahmedabad's pioneering effort in 2013, but implementation remains thin, underfunded and disconnected from urban planning. As heat waves grow longer and more lethal, especially for outdoor workers and slum residents, this piece asks why heat governance still sits outside the core machinery of Indian urban administration.

India's promise to reach net-zero emissions by 2070, made at COP26, was praised as a milestone yet criticised as the most distant target among major emitters. Behind the headline number sits a genuine dilemma: a growing, coal-reliant economy trying to sequence decarbonisation without abandoning development. This piece examines whether the pathway implied by current policy is credible or merely aspirational.