-The Hindu To address climate change, India has committed itself to a 20-25 per cent reduction in intensity of carbon emissions by 2020, but the international community will want more U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping have just signed a historic bilateral accord on climate change and clean energy cooperation in Beijing. This accord will have impacts in the run-up to the Paris Conference in December 2015 when the...

-The Times of India PUNE: Vehicles, air conditioners and industries may be the usual suspects contributing to the rise in pollution levels across the country, but the practice of biomass burning is an equal threat, if not bigger. A recent study assessing the effects of biomass burning on pollution in South Asia was conducted by Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and National Centre for Atmospheric Research in the US. The...

-The Hindustan Times Before climate change became the most important global environmental concern, the depletion of the ozone layer dominated the discourse. This depletion was being caused by the use of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) primarily in refrigerators and of HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons) largely in air-conditioners. To deal with this threat, following the Vienna Convention in 1985, the Montreal Protocol came into existence in 1987 with a Multilateral Fund following in 1991. This has...

-Deccan Chronicle We are faced with two crises on a planetary scale - climate change and species extinction. Our current modes of production and consumption, starting with the Industrial Revolution and aggravated by the advent of industrial agriculture, have contributed to both. If no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases, we could experience a catastrophic 4°C increase in temperatures by the end of the century. But climate change is not just...

-The Hindustan Times ‘Himalayan Glaciers will disappear by 2035'. This was one the very alarming conclusions of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was brought to my attention when I took over as minister for environment and forests in May 2009. Could this really be true, I wondered. I then decided to convene a series of meetings with experts from different institutions across the country. And what...