Reading the lines that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh delivered in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday and between them, the message is evident. “We have been successful in defending India’s national interests,” he said. “I didn’t go to Copenhagen with the mandate of saving the world or humanity. My mandate was to defend India’s right to develop at a faster rate. For Western countries, it is an environmental issue but for...

The Opposition has slammed the government over the Copenhagen Accord, saying the document betrays developing nations, and has  compromised India's interests. In a lengthy speech in Parliament this morning, the BJP's Arun Jaitley said the Copenhagen Accord helps developed countries avoid the commitments they made under the Kyoto Protocol. Jaitley also said the  Copenhagen Accord permits international scrutiny of India's actions to deal with global warming, something that the government had...

Imagine that the climate summit conference in Copenhagen this weekend was not a gathering of nations. Imagine a gathering of delegates from the many ages of a single nation. The fault lines would not be India and China versus the global rich, but rather China 1800 versus China 1978 versus China 2100. It would be a negotiation not between different lands but between different historical facts, different levels of survivalism....

Once the world's wettest places, Cherrapunji is getting up to 20% less rain every year - and is suffering water shortages. Residents say their heavenly abode in the clouds is hotter and drier than ever before - and they blame it on global warming. Cherrapunji - or Sohra in the local Khasi language - is located in the West Khasi Hills of India's north-eastern state of Meghalaya. "Never were there very...

The melting of Himalayan glaciers has been a bone of contention between international environmentalists and the Government of India. The government believes that some perceptions of the international environmentalists are alarmist. Now a new global report has sought to set aside that controversy by measuring the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers are melting. (The report enclosed below) The Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than the global average and the rate...