Icons made by Freepik from http://www.flaticon.com The German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Heiko Maas, recently released the ‘Policy guidelines for the Indo-Pacific’ (hereinafter the “Indo-Pacific Policy”). The 72-page document is available here. The Indo-Pacific Policy is intended to identify areas for cooperation between Germany and partner countries in the Indo-Pacific region (which is defined […]
The end of the holiday season is a good time to contemplate about food excesses, and wasteful consumption. In the year 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that one-third of all the food produced in the world for human consumption failed to reach a consumer. Food wasted on such an enormous scale, apart […]
With increasing awareness about anthropogenic climate change, there is a shift towards accounting for the true social cost of all our actions. The way we locomote, eat, and use our electrical appliances all entail a carbon footprint. So what about the externalities imposed by the annual event aimed at finding solutions on how to minimize […]
The latest support for a tax on meat comes from a modelling study led by Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, University of Oxford. The results and conclusions of the modelling exercise were recently published in PLOS ONE. This study is important for highlighting the health benefits of taxing meat, […]
The de-carbonization of the energy sector, through an increased share of renewable energy, is an urgent need. India has set itself a target of increasing its renewable energy capacity to 175 GW by 2022, and increasing the share of electricity from non-fossil fuel based energy sources to 40% by 2030, as part of its Nationally […]
Some of the earlier posts here have discussed the rising temperatures in Indian cities, the imminent heatwave conditions (particularly at 2ºC global warming), and the Urban Heat Island effect. The recent IPCC Report strongly recommends that policy-making be geared towards limiting global warming to 1.5ºC – an uphill task for Indian policy-makers, considering the Indian […]
The impact of food systems on climate change forms the focus of a recent article in Nature. The study considers the diverse environmental effects of different food systems: for example, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, pressures on croplands, use of freshwater and groundwater resources, and the impact of phosphorous and nitrogen from fertilizers. The discussion is set within […]
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) released its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C last week, and it paints a bleak picture. First, it highlights the devastating consequences of failing to curtail global warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, and the grave impact of the additional 0.5ºC above this threshold. And second, it […]
This year, the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences was awarded jointly to William Nordhaus of Yale University and Paul Romer of NYU Stern School of Business. Past Nobel laureates in this category include John Nash, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom. Last year, the Nobel was awarded to Richard Thaler for his work in the field […]
One of the terms that has entered the climate change narrative is “Urban Heat Island” or UHI, which refers to the heat accumulation phenomenon arising from urban construction and human activities. UHIs are defined as “those urban areas where the surface, sub-surface or air temperatures are higher than the corresponding temperatures in surrounding rural areas“. […]
India Environment Blog 