Category: Environment

In the 2026-27 budget, the outlay for the PM-KUSUM scheme nearly doubled to Rs 5,000 crore, signalling the government’s renewed emphasis on increasing solar power production centred on India’s farmers. Specifically, the scheme aims to provide energy and water security to farmers, enhance incomes, and decarbonise the farm sector through decentralised solar pumps and power...

World Frog Day on March 20 celebrates the role of frogs, the world’s most numerous amphibians. They live at the interface between freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, eat insects and in turn get eaten by other vertebrates, and are thus crucial in converting insect biomass into vertebrate biomass. Losing them can mean a boom in insects...

From the jet fuel used in bombing raids to acrid smoke from burning oil depots, the conflict in West Asia is inflicting a significant toll on nature and the climate. US and Israeli aircraft use a considerable amount of fuel reaching the Gulf and flying sorties over Iran, said Benjamin Neimark at the Queen Mary...

A new study by scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), published in NPJ Natural Hazards, examines the August 5, 2025 flash flood that destroyed Dharali village in Uttarakhand and killed six people. It sheds light on how warming temperatures affect glaciers, especially exposed ice patches on retreating glaciers, and highlights the need to...

In the industrial town of Morbi in Gujarat, the air usually hums with the roar of gas-fired kilns producing millions of square metres of ceramic tiles. Today, however, nearly a quarter of the town’s ceramic units have gone silent. Nearly a thousand kilometres away in Ludhiana, Punjab, one of India’s largest hosiery and knitwear clusters...

In the industrial town of Morbi in Gujarat, the air usually hums with the roar of gas-fired kilns producing millions of square metres of ceramic tiles. Today, however, nearly a quarter of the town’s ceramic units have gone silent. Nearly a thousand kilometres away in Ludhiana, Punjab, one of India’s largest hosiery and knitwear clusters...

A long-standing intervention by the Assam government to reduce crop depredation by elephants in its forest regions, piloted and designed by environmental non-government organisation World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is actually associated with more accidental elephant deaths, a study in Conservation Biology has reported. Launched in 2003 in Sonitpur district, the anti-depredation squads (ADS) of Assam...

Thunderstorms create large amounts of electricity that we see as lightning. Under these storms, scientists believed that electricity would flow through trees, giving them a dull ultraviolet glow, and affect the surrounding environment. These discharges are called coronae. However, no one measured these ‘glows’, predicted nearly a century ago, until recently. In a new study...

Last week, nine wild African cheetahs were tranquilised in Botswana’s savannah, quarantined for a few weeks in the country, and then taken on a 10-hour flight over the Indian Ocean by the Indian Air Force to Gwalior. From here, the big cats were flown in helicopters to large quarantine enclosures in Kuno National Park in...

Rain comes down steadily, painting the skies a dull grey and sending a chill breeze wafting through the windows of high-rise buildings. On the street below, water creeps out of cracks and pores. Next to the highway lies a lake but the boundary between water and land has blurred. What was once contained spreads across...