This week’s environment and conservation news stories rolled into one. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch the latest high quality, original video stories from nature’s frontline in India. To receive a weekly email roundup of stories, please sign-up for our newsletter. Rethinking master plans for India’s growing cities India’s urban areas are facing the ..read more

After recent parliamentary election setbacks for the Bharatiya Janata Party, where it lost key seats, its Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman faced a dual challenge as she presented her seventh consecutive budget on July 23, the first for the current administration: managing coalition demands and addressing rising unemployment. Despite these constraints, she introduced several initiatives ..read more

The forests of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve (RTR) in Uttarakhand host a plethora of biodiversity, like the golden jackal, sambar, barking deer, rhesus macaque, nilgai and elephants. Fed by the Ganga river, this moist deciduous forest has a thick canopy of sal and sheesham trees. On the outskirts lie smaller patches of reserve forests. Rural ..read more

The warm morning sun broke out from behind a canopy of leaves, passing through several intricate Asian weaver ant nests in the banyan tree of an apartment complex in Bengaluru. The busy insects soldiered on in line, marching past a foraging paper wasp and several small ‘true bugs’ (insects from the order Hemiptera like shield ..read more

Where: Gandhinagar settlement, Marathwada When: Morning The external wall of Phulabai Pawar’s house features a washing powder advertisement that reads: ‘Keeps your clothes fresh and clean!’ Phulabai is washing dishes in front of this advertisement, using ash. People in nearby homes are hurrying to send their children to school. While in Phulabai’s house, both her boys are reclining in front of a half-broken television set. “After my husband’s death, neither my parents nor my in-laws were ready to shoulder the responsibility of my children,” she says. “My elder son used to go to a private schoo ..read more

Different animals make unique sounds. They use sounds to communicate with each other. With the help of bioacoustics, scientists are now beginning to understand how animals share information, work together and form social groups. To understand the context of the calls, researchers watch what animals are doing when they make certain sounds. They record and analyse these sounds. The analysis helps them learn what the sounds mean, whether the animal is looking for a mate, warning others of danger, or just playing. This is the second episode of Mongabay-India’s newest podcast, Wild Frequencies ..read more

India has set a target of net-zero emissions by 2070, and to reduce its GDP emission intensity by 45% by 2030 from the 2005 levels. In line with these targets, the country is promoting fuel blending to reduce vehicular emissions. After setting a target of 20% ethanol blending with petrol by 2030 under the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme, the government is now promoting the blending of compressed biogas (CBG) with compressed natural gas and piped natural gas for transport and domestic sectors respectively. To claim its position as the leader in biofuel production, Uttar Pradesh, one of t ..read more

Earlier this month, the central government denied the Centre for Financial Accountability’s parent organisation the right to continue receiving foreign funds under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, citing discrepancies in its income tax return filings. The action against the organisation is the latest one against civil society and non-governmental organisations perceived to be critical of the government and its development projects, many of which could have detrimental impacts on the environment. The Centre for Financial Accountability (CENFA) describes itself as an organisation that ..read more

An expressway through a dense forest to facilitate trade, tourism, or pilgrimage; a massive hydropower project in the Himalayas producing electricity for our hot-as-hell metropolitan cities; and a vast solar park in Rajasthan to shift our power production from fossil fuels to renewables. These are all instances united by two facts. One, such projects seek large volumes of finance from public banks and financial institutions (FIs) that run on public savings, investments, insurance installments, and more. These are risky investments with long gestation periods and uncertainties and the danger of ..read more

A manicured garden with blooming flowers is arguably the last thing one would associate with a municipal dumpyard. Yet, an about 10,000 sq ft garden skirts Coonoor town’s solid waste management centre at Ottupattarai. “We thought of a garden to break the stigma around waste. The thought that it’s unsightly and needs to be avoided has to change,” says Samantha Iyanna, one of the founders of Clean Coonoor, a Coonoor-based civil society group, that runs the facility. The garden, featuring 40 perennials, over 30 annuals, and native grasses, was established five years ago adjacent to the five-hecta ..read more