Is the majority of India veg or non-veg? Well, contrary to impression, the land of Gandhi and Buddha is predominantly non-veg. It may well have been majority vegetarian country at some point of time but the new trend is that more and more people are taking to non-vegetarian diets. A new policy paper, “Veg or Non-Veg? India at the Crossroads,” published by Brighter Green, a New York-based public policy action...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

The Durban conference in December 2011 marked a breakthrough in international efforts to combat climate change. The EU and India played a key role in final negotiations that unlocked the pact on the last morning of the conference. Together, we found the compromise that provided the basis to launch negotiations on a new global legal framework for climate action that the world so badly needs.  It is no secret that the...

-The Hindustan Times   Had the world's leaders decided to ensure that global warming would increase to 3 to 4 degrees Celsius, perhaps to 5 degrees Celsius, instead of the 1.5-to-20 degrees Celsius threshold (over preindustrial temperatures) that scientists believe earth can tolerate, they couldn't have acted more purposively than they did at the Durban climate conference. If this sounds like a harsh judgement that radically differs from the official spin that...

-EPW   A paradigm shift on global strategy, but will it make a difference to climate change or only pass the buck? The United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Durban ended dramatically with a last minute agreement of sorts, which only talks about more talks to arrive at some kind of legally binding instrument that will impose emission curbs on all countries from 2020. The agreement is simply not enough in...