26 Mar 2026
From Dubai’s solar-powered "underground fortresses" to Chennai’s monsoon gambles, the shift toward green desalination is transforming water from a seasonal miracle into a strategic certainty. On a winter morning in Dubai, a glass of water can feel like a small miracle. Not because it is rare at the tap—Dubai’s taps run with confidence—but because the city’s certainty is engineered. It is built from coast-hugging pipelines, membranes finer than paper, power agreements measured in decades, and a public philosophy that treats water like a strategic asset. In recent years, that philosophy has become more explicit: build water like you build resilience—produce it reliably, store it prudently, and protect it as if it were national security. Then the story jumps, like a film cut, to coastal India—Chennai in late summer is the most honest stage. The ocean is right there, the air is heavy, and yet water can become the day’s central anxiety. Reservoirs dip, groundwater falls, and a city’s relationship with water turns intimate and immediate: tanker queues, rising prices, neighbourhood WhatsApp alerts, and the uneasy knowledge that rain is both a blessing and a gamble. The truth is that India’s water story is not a desert story; it is a monsoon story—uneven, seasonal, and increasingly unpredictable. Between these two geographies sits one technology with two reputations. One is old: energy-hungry, carbon-heavy, and rough on marine life. The other is new: cleaner, smarter, and increasingly tied to renewables, data, and circular economy thinking. That new identity is what the world now calls green desalination. Desalination, in plain terms, with real-world stakes: Desalination is the process of removing dissolved salts and impurities from seawater or brackish water to produce freshwater for cities and industries. The two main families are thermal desalination, which uses heat to evaporate water and condense it back, and membrane desalination, especially seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), which pushes seawater through membranes that block salts. The Gulf pioneered large thermal systems because heat and fossil energy were abundant. But the modern shift—especially visible in Dubai—is toward SWRO, because it generally uses less energy per unit of water and integrates more naturally with renewable electricity and next-generation efficiency tools. DEWA’s public messaging repeatedly anchors this shift as a sustainability move. What makes desalination “green” is not the machine—it is the choices around it: Green desalination is not a single invention. It is a discipline: how you power the plant, how you pull water from the sea, how you return what you do not use, how you monitor the coast, and how honestly you disclose the data. It aims to reduce lifecycle carbon emissions and marine harm while keeping water reliable and affordable. You can see this shift in the UAE’s flagship direction. The Hassyan seawater desalination project in Dubai is being positioned as a major reverse-osmosis build-out linked to clean-energy intent, backed by long-term procurement structures. UAE state media reported that the first phase has reached around 90% completion and that all phases are scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2027, with total investments reported in the billions of dirhams. But “green” becomes real only when each promise is backed by design and governance that stands up in public. That is where cases matter. The first green feature is low-carbon power. In Dubai, DEWA has stated that by 2030 it aims to produce 100% of desalinated water through a mix of clean energy and waste heat. This is not just an aspiration line; it is a direction that forces procurement, grid planning, and technology choices to converge. It also matters because it sets a benchmark other cities will be asked to match. Outside the Gulf, the most inspiring examples come from places that had to innovate because they could not afford waste. Perth, in Western Australia, built its desalination story around the principle that water security should not expand carbon insecurity; official environmental documentation for Perth’s desalination development describes the intent to source renewable electricity for plant needs. In Spain’s Canary Islands, where desalination is often essential, UN-linked documentation and research have explored how reverse osmosis can be paired with renewable energy and storage in island contexts. Even more powerfully, El Hierro—one of the Canary Islands—has demonstrated how renewables can underpin essential services, including desalination, by using wind and pumped hydro storage as a system. These are not copy-paste models for India or the UAE, but they show what is possible when energy and water are planned as one ecosystem. The second green feature is energy efficiency, because every kilowatt-hour you save is carbon you do not emit and cost you do not pass to citizens. Israel is the global case study for relentless efficiency and smart contracting. In 2020, Israel’s government announced that the Sorek 2 tender achieved what it described as the world’s lowest price for desalinated water, reflecting a combination of technology maturity and procurement design. The World Bank has similarly documented how policy choices and contracting conditions shaped record-low bid prices in places like Israel’s Sorek . The lesson for governments is straightforward: efficiency is not only an engineering upgrade; it is also a policy and procurement outcome. The third green feature is safer seawater intake—because how you take water from the sea determines how much life you unintentionally take with it. Modern guidance in jurisdictions like California has emphasized intake approaches that reduce marine impacts, including subsurface intakes where feasible, and regulatory frameworks have increasingly pushed in that direction. The best plants no longer treat “intake” as plumbing; they treat it as marine stewardship. The fourth green feature is responsible brine management, and this is where the world still struggles. Brine is not a side note; it is the shadow every desalination plant casts. Research reviews consistently underline the environmental risks: brine discharge, chemical use, energy consumption, and intake impacts are the core environmental issues that must be managed. Studies along coasts where desalination is mature, including Israel’s Mediterranean shoreline, have examined ecological indicators and the need for monitoring, because brine can elevate salinity and stress sensitive marine communities if dispersal is inadequate. The mature approach is not denial; it is design plus measurement. Diffusers, offshore discharge design, and continuous monitoring are the engineering side; transparent data and enforceable standards are the governance side. The fifth green feature is the circular water strategy around the plant, because desalination must be a backbone, not a crutch. The UAE’s national framing is unusually explicit here. The UAE Water Security Strategy 2036, as summarized on official channels, includes targets such as reducing total demand and pushing treated wastewater reuse toward very high levels. In plain language: the UAE is trying to ensure that desalination is one pillar among several, not the only pillar holding up the roof. Singapore’s playbook is also instructive. PUB describes desalinated water as one part of a broader “water loop,” and Singapore’s Keppel Marina East Desalination Plant is celebrated not only for producing water but for being designed with community and land constraints in mind—treatment underground, a green roof, and dual-mode capability to treat either seawater or reservoir water depending on conditions. That is green desalination as urban design, not just infrastructure. Why the UAE needed a new desalination story, and why it is now accelerating: The UAE is arid; desalination is not a supplement, it is a foundation. Yet the old model carried two heavy costs: carbon and coastal ecology. That is why “more desalination” is no longer the headline. The headline is “better desalination.” Hassyan is central to that narrative. It is not simply a plant; it is a symbol of a transition—from thermal dependence toward RO expansion, from conventional power to cleaner energy intent, and from utility planning to independent water producer models that can accelerate delivery. UAE state media has reported the project’s investment scale, completion progress, and target schedule. But production alone is not resilience. The UAE’s most visionary move is what sits inland: storage. Abu Dhabi’s Liwa strategic water reserve uses aquifer storage and recovery, injecting desalinated water into an aquifer and recovering it when needed. A well-documented project profile describes storage of about 26 million cubic meters—enough to supply Abu Dhabi Emirate with emergency water for about 90 days. This is a mindset shift: water is not only made; it is banked. There is also a global timing factor pushing seriousness. The 2026 United Nations Water Conference will be held in the UAE from 2–4 December 2026, co-hosted with Senegal. When a country hosts the world’s water conversation, it tends to accelerate its own domestic performance—because the world will ask for evidence, not slogans. Why India needs desalination, and why India’s lesson is “distribution before celebration”: India is not short of rain in aggregate. India is short of predictability, distribution capacity, and clean reliable delivery. The NITI Aayog Composite Water Management Index warned that India is facing severe water stress, and the “urban groundwater risk” narrative—amplified even in official parliamentary and government communications—has shaped public consciousness. India’s desalination relevance is clearest in coastal megacities, industrial clusters, and islands. Chennai’s experience contains both hope and warning. The 150 MLD Nemmeli desalination plant was inaugurated in February 2024 as a major augmentation effort. Yet news reporting has highlighted an uncomfortable reality: even after the plant became operational, some localities—particularly along OMR—continued to face acute shortages, relying on tankers and questioning why desalinated water was not reaching them consistently. This is the distribution lesson in its rawest form: desalination capacity does not automatically translate into equitable access. Chennai’s second lesson is operational resilience. The Minjur desalination plant—an older, critical asset—has faced prolonged non-operation and restart delays, with residents in North Chennai reporting heavy dependence on tankers and inconsistent quality supplies. This is not a “desalination failure” so much as a governance warning: if maintenance, contracting, and lifecycle upgrades are not treated as mission-critical, the most expensive assets become unreliable at exactly the worst moment. Chennai’s emerging response is also telling. Reporting has discussed efforts like a large ring main project intended to interconnect reservoirs and desal plants to reduce distribution inequity and improve redundancy. That is a mature idea: build a water grid, not isolated sources. India’s third lesson is that desalination is not only municipal. Industry has already been moving. A clean example is Gujarat: VA Tech Wabag received orders related to seawater reverse osmosis desalination at Reliance’s Jamnagar complex, reflecting industrial willingness to finance desalination for process water so that cities and agriculture face less competition for freshwater sources. When industry desalinates for itself, the policy question becomes: can regulation and incentives ensure it is done in a green, transparent way rather than as a hidden coastal footprint? India’s fourth lesson is island innovation. Parliamentary materials and India’s marine-science ecosystem have referenced desalination for Lakshadweep, including reverse-osmosis based supply in Kavaratti and the urgency created when such facilities go offline. Islands teach the world something important: decentralized desalination is not a luxury; it is often the only realistic safety net. The legal spine matters, because “green” is enforceable only if it is regulated: India’s desalination projects intersect immediately with coastal regulation and environmental clearance processes. The CRZ Notification 2019 establishes the requirement for CRZ clearance for regulated activities in coastal zones and embeds the role of Coastal Zone Management Authorities. Large infrastructure may also need appraisal under India’s EIA framework under the EIA Notification 2006, which structures how prior environmental clearance is sought and assessed. What this means in practice is that India can, if it chooses, build a truly green desalination regime through enforceable conditions: intake standards, brine discharge design requirements, mandatory marine monitoring, public disclosure of salinity and chemical indicators, and grievance mechanisms for coastal communities. The UAE’s regulatory texture is different. It is strategy-driven, utility-led, and executed through powerful institutions. The official framing of the UAE Water Security Strategy 2036 includes targets for demand reduction and wastewater reuse. Dubai’s utility has publicly stated a 2030 clean-energy direction for desalinated water production. This model is strong at speed and scale; its green credibility will increasingly depend on how deeply marine protections and transparency are institutionalized as the build-out accelerates. Ecology and people do not live in separate departments: The sea pays attention to desalination in three predictable places: intake, outfall, and coastal construction. Research syntheses emphasize that brine discharge and chemical use, along with intake impacts, are among the most significant environmental concerns. In India, the people impact often arrives through livelihood anxiety. When fisherfolk hear “new intake” or “new outfall,” they do not think in cubic meters; they think in nets, catch, nearshore behaviour , and safety. If governments treat this as a communications problem, the project will suffer. If governments treat it as participatory coastal governance—baseline studies, transparent monitoring, community observation roles—the social licence becomes possible. Cities also pay attention, but in a different language: tariffs, equity, and reliability. Chennai’s OMR story is a reminder that producing water is not enough if the network is incomplete or inequitable. A desalination plant that serves only the well-connected becomes politically fragile. A desalination plant embedded in a distribution upgrade, leakage control, and transparent service metrics becomes a public confidence engine. What governments in the UAE and India should do next, policy-wise and measure-wise: The UAE’s next decade should be about proving that scale can be green without being opaque. The first policy move should be to institutionalize marine environmental performance as publicly measurable, not merely internally monitored. Every major desalination asset should publish regular marine indicators around the intake and outfall—salinity gradients, temperature, residual chemicals, and biodiversity proxy measures—paired with independent audits. The technology to do this is no longer exotic; what is needed is the mandate and the culture of disclosure. The second policy move should be to treat brine as a regulated industrial stream with innovation incentives. The UAE should create a national “brine innovation corridor,” offering concessional finance and test permissions for brine concentration, mineral recovery experiments, and low-impact discharge designs, while keeping strict ecological thresholds. Research shows brine is a major environmental challenge; policy should treat its management as a national innovation priority, not a compliance afterthought. The third policy move should be demand-side governance that actually lands in households and landscaping. Targets exist at the strategy level; the next step is a behavioural and pricing architecture that rewards efficiency without punishing vulnerable groups. The UAE’s Water Security Strategy framing on demand and reuse can become meaningful only when utilities translate it into enforceable building codes, smart metering, leak-response SLAs, and public campaigns that feel practical rather than moralistic. The fourth policy move should be to expand the Liwa idea as a regional resilience template. Aquifer storage and recovery is not only an engineering win; it is a geopolitical insurance product. The UAE has already shown what such strategic storage can look like at scale. The next step is to integrate strategic storage into broader emergency planning and regional support frameworks, especially as climate extremes become more frequent. India’s next decade should be about disciplined selectivity and turning desalination into a “green-plus-equity” instrument rather than a prestige project. The first policy move for India’s central government should be to publish a national green desalination framework that states can adopt. This must include minimum standards for intake impact reduction, brine discharge design, mandatory marine monitoring, and transparent public reporting. India already has the regulatory skeleton through CRZ and EIA processes; what is missing is a uniform “green desalination playbook” that reduces project-by-project ambiguity and improves compliance quality. The second policy move should be to link desalination approvals to distribution and equity plans. Chennai’s recent experience shows how politically fragile desalination becomes when distribution gaps persist. Every new plant clearance should require a time-bound network readiness plan: pipelines, storage balancing, pressure management, and last-mile household connections, with measurable milestones. If the network is not ready, the plant becomes a stranded promise. The third policy move should be to create a lifecycle performance regime for existing desalination assets. India’s Minjur experience shows the cost of aging infrastructure, contracting disputes, and delayed renewal. Governments should mandate periodic technical audits, membrane replacement planning, energy performance benchmarks, and resilience budgeting. A plant’s “capex ribbon cutting” should be a small moment; its twenty-year reliability should be the real KPI. The fourth policy move should be to explicitly encourage industry-led desalination for process water, but only under green rules and public disclosure. Gujarat’s industrial desalination orders show industry appetite. India can channel this appetite into a public good by requiring renewable power linkage where feasible, robust brine management, and community consultation where coastal impacts are non-trivial. The fifth policy move should be to treat islands as innovation pilots. Lakshadweep’s desalination dependence illustrates both the value and fragility of such systems. India should build a national island desalination mission that bundles renewable microgrids, storage, smart maintenance contracts, and remote monitoring—because islands are where “green desalination” can be proven in its most honest form. Finally, India’s energy transition is a hidden enabler. India’s updated NDC targets about 50% cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030, and official communications have highlighted progress toward that direction. The cleaner the grid becomes, the greener desalination can become—provided plants are designed to take advantage of that shift rather than lock in inefficient consumption. What corporates should invest in—and why this is a once-in-a-generation market: If governments set the rules, corporate capital will decide how fast innovation becomes normal. The corporate opportunity here is not merely building plants; it is building the green desalination stack. Membrane technology is the first bet. Better membranes reduce energy demand, improve salt rejection, and extend operational life. Energy recovery devices and high-efficiency pumping are the second bet, because energy efficiency is the biggest lever on both cost and carbon.Digital operations are the third bet. AI-driven optimization, predictive maintenance, and digital twins can reduce downtime, prevent catastrophic failures, and improve water quality stability. India’s operational issues at older assets underscore how valuable reliability engineering is. Intake and outfall innovation is the fourth bet. Subsurface intake solutions, advanced screening, and diffuser design reduce ecological harm; these are investable, scalable engineering markets, not academic niceties. Brine valorisation is the fifth bet, but it must be approached with realism. Research and industry commentary increasingly discuss “brine mining” and resource recovery, yet the economics are still emerging and site-specific. The opportunity is to invest in pilots that can be scaled if mineral recovery proves commercially viable without creating new pollution pathways.Finally, renewables-plus-storage integration is the sixth bet. The most credible green desalination stories globally are the ones where energy and water are engineered together. Masdar’s renewable-energy desalination pilot programme, launched in 2013, explicitly explored energy-efficient desalination technologies powered by renewables, with commercial partners testing approaches. The corporate winners will be those who can package water production with clean power reliability. The role of civil society and environmental activism: from protest to participatory governance: Civil society’s role is not to be “anti-desalination” or “pro-desalination.” It is to be pro-evidence and pro-ecology, while staying grounded in people’s right to water. The most constructive activism in the next decade will do three things consistently. It will demand baseline ecological studies before construction, because you cannot prove “no harm” without knowing what existed before. It will insist on public monitoring data after commissioning, because brine and chemical impacts must be measurable and transparent. And it will create community participation pathways, particularly for fisherfolk, so coastal livelihoods are not treated as an externality. Civil society should also push for a broader truth: desalination is not a moral substitute for conservation. The most responsible water regimes pair desalination with leak reduction, wastewater reuse, demand management, and transparent governance. The UAE’s national strategy language around demand and reuse points in that direction; activism should help ensure it is implemented with credibility. The inspiring global examples that should shape what comes next: Israel shows how procurement design and long-term national planning can drive costs down and performance up, including record-low bid pricing claims for Sorek 2. Singapore shows how desalination can be integrated into urban planning and public space thinking, as demonstrated by the Keppel Marina East plant’s dual-mode capability and community-integrated design. Australia shows how desalination can be paired with renewably powered planning at a system level, including official moves toward renewably powered new capacity. Island initiatives in Spain’s Canaries show how renewables, storage, and essential services can be engineered together, creating real-world laboratories for the water-energy future. Futuristic trends and possibilities: what “green desalination” could become by the mid-2030s The next wave will not look like a bigger version of today. It will look like a smarter ecosystem. Expect desalination plants to behave like adaptive software. AI will continuously tune energy use, membrane performance, and chemical dosing based on real-time water quality and power grid signals. Digital twins will simulate failures before they happen, turning maintenance from reactive to predictive. Expect desalination to decentralize in parallel. Mega-plants will remain essential for big cities, but islands and coastal districts will increasingly use modular, containerized, renewable-linked systems with remote monitoring. India’s island needs and the fragility of small systems make this a practical necessity, not a futuristic fantasy. Expect “intake and outfall diplomacy” to become a field. The plants that win public trust will be those that minimize marine harm by design, use advanced intakes where feasible, and publish monitoring data that coastal communities can understand and verify. Expect brine to become an innovation battleground. Some sites will prove mineral recovery viable; others will not. The most valuable breakthroughs may be in brine concentration, selective extraction, and safer dispersion, rather than a single magical “brine-to-profit” story. Expect desalination to merge with advanced reuse. The most water-secure countries will not rely on desalination alone; they will create a circular system where wastewater reuse expands dramatically, desalination fills seasonal gaps, and strategic storage protects against shocks. The UAE’s 2036 strategy framing and the global spotlight of the UN Water Conference in 2026 make this convergence especially relevant now. Finally, expect a cultural shift in how nations measure success. In the old era, success was “how much water we produce.” In the new era, success will be “how cleanly we produce it, how fairly we distribute it, how transparently we prove ecological safety, and how intelligently we reduce demand.” That is the invitation to both the UAE and India. The UAE can prove to the world that scale can be green, fast, and transparent. India can prove that desalination can be selective, equitable, and locally trusted—an insurance policy that strengthens monsoon resilience rather than replacing it. If both succeed, green desalination will stop being a technology story. It will become a governance story—and, quietly, a hope story. UAE’s green desalination: a produce, store and protect model: UAE’s solar powered desalination programme is scripting a green future-In the heart of the Rub' al Khali desert, the midday sun usually turns the horizon into a shimmering mirage. Alongside this reality, now there is a new kind of oasis that is gradually rising: potable water extraction that doesn’t rely on ancient aquifers or sparse rainfall, but on the unrelenting power of the sun and the vastness of the Arabian Gulf. Call it Solar desalination. Till last year, desalination meant exploitation of fossil fuels for large amounts of electricity causing a harm to the creatures in the sea. However, as the United Arab Emirates enters 2026, it now stands at a historic crossroads in its perennial battle against water scarcity. The nation, which receives less than 100mm of rain annually, has transformed from a region of wandering well-diggers into a global laboratory that is relentlessly researching the exploration of the highly scarce freshwater in an ecologically compatible fashion. The new-age era of Green Desalination: The centerpiece of this transformation is the Hassyan seawater desalination plant located in Dubai. As of early January 2026, the first phase of this massive facility has reached 90% completion. Once fully operational in early 2027, it will be the world’s largest solar-powered desalination plant. What’s more, it will be capable of providing 818,000 cubic meters of drinking water daily—enough to sustain two million people of the geography.. For decades, the UAE relied on thermal desalination. It’s a process in which "boiled" seawater uses waste heat from power plants. It was highly energy-intensive and carbon-heavy. Albeit effective ,the shift toward Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO)—driven by solar energy—marks a major transition. At Hassyan, the cost of water has plummeted to a world-record low of $0.36 per cubic meter, proving that sustainability can also be economically viable without harming the environment.. An underground fortress: However, producing water is only half the battle; the other half is keeping it. In the Al Dhafra region of Liwa, the UAE has completed the world’s largest strategic reserve of desalinated water. This "strategic underground fortress" stores over 20 billion liters (5.6 billion gallons) in natural aquifers, enough to supply Abu Dhabi with 180 liters per person, that too for up to 90 days in an extreme emergency. "The era of 'produce and consume in real-time' is over," notes a recent energy report. "We have moved to a 'produce, store, and protect' model, treating water with the same strategic weight as oil." The Thirst of Progress: The UAE's water narrative is one of explosive growth. From a few hundred thousand people to nearly 10 million, with projections hitting 16.5 million by 2050, the demand for water has skyrocketed, fuelled by construction, agriculture, and a lifestyle that often exceeds global consumption averages. "We're like a thirsty traveler in a vast desert, finding an oasis, but knowing the oasis can only stretch so far," explains Dr. Fatima Al Marzooqi, a water resources specialist. "Our non-renewable groundwater is depleting rapidly, some aquifers dropping over a meter annually, leading to saltwater intrusion. We're literally draining our past to water our present". This is unsustainable in the long run both from an economic as well as ecological perspectives. The Sea's Gift, The Brine's Burden: Desalination plants dot the coastlines, vast humming factories that turn the Arabian Gulf into fresh water. Technologies like reverse osmosis, forcing seawater through membranes, provide the bulk of the UAE's supply, alongside water recycling and reuse. "It's a double-edged sword," admits Engineer Khalid Al Mansouri, overseeing a major plant. "We get the water we need, but the process is energy-intensive, often relying on fossil fuels. And then there's the brine – the super-salty, toxic byproduct. We're producing massive quantities, and its disposal is costly and harms marine ecosystems". Innovation Oasis: But the UAE isn't just consuming; it's also innovating. The narrative is shifting towards sustainability, primarily catalysed by national strategies and visionaries at Masdar City. "We're moving beyond just making water," says a Masdar representative. "We're powering desalination with solar, aiming for commercially viable, renewable-energy-driven plants. We're exploring technologies like forward osmosis, which uses half the energy of reverse osmosis, and even extracting valuable minerals from brine". The Water Aid Foundation (Suqia) is pro-actively working to bring water access to underserved communities, while initiatives focus on smart irrigation for green spaces and water-intensive golf courses, using treated sewage water and advanced techniques that helps conserve every drop. The Story is not over yet: A Balancing Act: The UAE's story is far from over. It's a high-stake game of survival. The nation, once solely reliant on finite groundwater, is now a global leader in desalination, but the real victory will be in mastering the environmental footprint of this essential technology. "Our goal," concludes Dr. Al Marzooqi, "is to write a new chapter – one where our ambition doesn't outpace our planet's resources. The future of the UAE, its economy, its people, depends on turning this water crisis into a story of sustainable triumph". The challenge is immense, but the determination, forged in the desert's unforgiving heat, is even greater. The 2036 Roadmap: Efficiency and Circularity: The UAE’s progress in water security and desalination sustainability is guided by the Water Security Strategy 2036, which aims to: Reduce total water demand by 21% through smart meters and efficiency. Reuse 95% of treated wastewater, redirecting it from the sea back into irrigation, cooling systems, and industrial landscaping. Decarbonizing the sector, aiming to reduce CO2 emissions by 100 million metric tons over the life of the entire project. UAE on global stage in 2026: The world is taking pro-active note of this transition. In December 2026, the UAE will co-host the United Nations Water Conference in Abu Dhabi, the first time the global community has gathered to center water security as the primary driver of the climate agenda. To support this global leadership, the Abu Dhabi Global Water Platform was launched this month with a $1 billion commitment from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) to finance water projects in developing nations between 2026 and 2030. Transforming Waste into Wealth: Sustainability efforts have also moved into "circular" brine management. Traditionally, the salty byproduct of desalination was pumped back into the sea, risking all the marine ecosystems. Today, the UAE is pioneering brine mining. This readily involves extracting high-value minerals like magnesium, lithium, and bromine from the waste. What was once an environmental liability is being reinvented as a raw material for the technology and energy sectors. As the calls to prayer echo across the skyline of Abu Dhabi and Dubai this January, the taps remain open, fuelled by a high-tech alchemy that turns salt into life and sunlight into water. For a nation born of the sand, the future is now decidedly blue. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
In the heat and rot of a municipal dump, nature has quietly evolved its own solution to the plastic crisis—a tiny organism shrinking centuries of decay into mere weeks of biological appetite. What This Story Is Really About: It all begins in a place we usually ignore: a landfill. Not a glossy innovation lab with infrastructure created by investing millions of dollars. It’s not even in a university incubator or a climate summit stage, where stories on sustainability can emerge. In fact the story began in an ubiquitous municipal dump site near Islamabad—layered with rot, dust, heat, and other unwanted variables. In that harsh chemistry of neglect, a fungus quietly evolved its own strategy for survival: by feasting on discarded plastic. Called Aspergillus tubingensis, this fungus was found doing what sounds impossible in everyday language: breaking down a type of plastic called polyester polyurethane. This is the polymer hiding in plain sight in modern life—foams, insulation panels, furniture cushions, car interiors, shoe soles.It is also, in waste form, one of the most difficult plastics to deal with. The story of Aspergillus tubingensis is a veritable reminder that the solutions to some of our biggest environmental problems might already exist in nature, waiting for us to discover them. Importantly, Nature plans for healing itself, and it involves a tiny, hungry fungus with an extraordinary appetite. Why This Matters Now: Plastic Has Become a Planetary Systems Crisis From time immemorial, plastic has been regarded as a curse on the whole dimension of sustainability. In fact plastic has become a planetary systemic problem, a tough polluter that spoils the water we drink and the air we breathe. Globally, plastic production and use has surged to roughly 435 million tonnes in a single year. Global plastic waste generation has crossed 350 million tonnes a year, and the share that actually gets recycled remains stubbornly low—around 9 percent once we account for losses and inefficiencies. The rest is burned, buried, dumped, or simply disappears into the environment, thus becoming a living nightmare. Every year, tens of millions of tonnes of plastic leak into aquatic ecosystems, rivers and coasts. Worse still, fisheries and food chains carry the fragments forward. And plastic is no longer merely “out there.” It has been detected inside the human body too, including in blood—an unsettling reminder that what we throw away does not stay away. Polyurethane that sits at the centre of this mess is rarely treated as a recycling priority because it is often composite-heavy, chemically stubborn, and logistically awkward. It ends up landfilled or incinerated—two methods that do not solve the problem as much as relocate it across time and geography. Landfills store it for decades. Burning can release toxic emissions. The Discovery of a fungus at the dump site: Nature’s Experiment, Not a Lab Invention The significance of the landfill discovery is not that scientists “created” a plastic-eating organism. The significance is that they noticed nature already experimenting—adapting to the world we have made. A team of researchers including Dr Sehroon Khan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences was sifting through waste, following an intuitive thought that nature in its infinite adaptability might have already started to fight back. And his hunch was correct: Among the decaying organic matter and discarded synthetic debris, the researchers found a species of fungus not just surviving but thriving on the surface of discarded plastic films. This fungus is a common black mold which has the dubious distinction of spoiling fruit. But never before was this fungi linked to the rapid degradation of such tough, man-made material called plastics. The researchers then brought samples back to the lab. Here they began a series of meticulous scientific experiments to understand the remarkable capabilities of this organism. Controlled lab conditions produced astonishing results. The fungus just didn’t nibble away at the plastic but it aggressively broke it down. The secret lay in its unique biological mechanisms: the fungus secretes powerful enzymes such as sweet-tasting esterase and lipase, that attack and break down the strong chemical bonds holding the long ploymer chains of polyurethane together. Once these bonds weaken, the fungus uses its physical strength—it’s threadlike mycelial network—to penetrate the plastic’s surface, creating racks and holes and tearing the material into smaller digestive fragments. These fragments are then absorbed and converted into simple harmless substances like carbon dioxide, water and new fungal biomass. While natural degradation takes centuries, this fungus could visibly damage and fragment a polyurethane film in a matter of weeks, and in liquid culture it can consume 90 per cent of the material in a record three weeks. Subsequent reports, some involving potential genetic modifications or highly specific pre-treatments have suggested even faster rates, in certain instances, reducing the significant amount of plastic in days. This rapid timeline, shrinking centuries into weeks and even days under optimal conditions represents a potential revolution in natural waste management. The limitation However, discovery of A.Tubingensis is not a magical wand that will instantly clean every beach and landfill. This Is because its efficiency is heavily dependent on factors like temperature, pH levels and nutrient availability. However, it offers a powerful new tool in this continuing battle against plastic pollution. Scientists are now exploring ways to leverage the natural process on a large, industrial scale. This includes the following: Bioreactors: Using this fungi in controlled, optimized environments such as large bioreactors to process plastic waste efficiently.Enzyme sprays: Isolating and synthesizing the specific enzymes the fungus produces, which could then be used in specific applications or integrated into waste treatment facilities.Decentralized solutions: The potential for small-scale, localized systems, maybe even a household or community-level composting unit that uses the fungi to process everyday yet humungous amount of plastic waste. What the Fungus cannot do Viral claims that plastic can be consumed in three hours are not supported. Actual degradation occurs over days and weeks, and in controlled studies the process for breaking down polyurethane films into smaller pieces can take on the order of two months in liquid environments, with conditions affecting speed significantly. The breakthrough is not speed-as-magic. Instead it is only a sample breakthrough to showcase a biological possibility, demonstrated strongly enough to justify serious scale-up research. Who Stands to Gain If This Moves From Nature to Lab to Life If this discovery is engineered responsibly, the circle of beneficiaries is large—and it includes people often excluded from high-tech climate solutions. Municipalities and waste managers could gain a tool for foam-heavy dumps, legacy landfills, and polyurethane fractions that today have no clear end-of-life pathway. Industries that generate polyurethane waste—construction, furniture and mattresses, automotive, footwear—could shift from disposal to treatment. Communities living near dumps and open dumping grounds could benefit from reduced burning and reduced long-term contamination. And ecosystems downstream—rivers, estuaries, coastal fisheries—could face less leakage and less accumulation over time. In fact the discovery of this fungus is about moving from eco compatible waste management systems to ushering in environmental justice. The Road to Mass Use: Turning Biology Into Infrastructure The most practical future is not dumping fungi into the wild and hoping for the best. The practical future is industrial and controlled. One route is bioreactors designed for polymer treatment—closed-loop environments where temperature, pH, oxygen, moisture, and nutrients are optimised for performance. Containment matters because Aspergillus species can pose occupational health risks if mishandled, particularly through spores and allergies. In climate solutions, safety is not optional. An even more scalable route may be enzymes rather than living organisms. If the active enzymes and genetic pathways can be isolated, enhanced, and produced at industrial scale, they can be deployed like tools—sprays, baths, treatment lines—under controlled conditions. That reduces biosafety risk, improves standardisation, and makes regulation clearer. Above all, mass adoption will depend on a host of empirical evidence. This could include concrete evidence that the products are safe and that in the process of cleaning up the environment this experiment does not end up creating more microplastic pollution.. What Comes Next: Globalising the Breakthrough Without Losing Control If the world wants to turn this into a global tool, the next steps are obvious and demanding. The findings must be replicated across labs and climates—because biology behaves differently in different temperatures, humidities, and waste compositions. Kinetics must be improved through protein engineering and process optimisation, without creating risky organisms. Pilot plants must test real-world mixed waste rather than clean laboratory films. Standards must be developed for biosafety, emissions, by-products, and claims. And deployment must prioritise the places where mismanaged waste is highest, because that is where the environmental gain is greatest. If done well, the impact could be significant: less polyurethane burned in the open, less dumped without control, less stored in landfills for decades, and a more credible circular pathway for one of the most troublesome polymer families we use daily. The Shadow Future: Profiteering, Greenwashing, and the Risk of False Salvation Every breakthrough attracts a marketplace. Sometimes that market accelerates good outcomes. Sometimes it distorts them. The first risk is over-claiming such as “three hours,” “all plastics,” “zero residue.” The important risk is psychological: the temptation to treat biodegradation as permission to continue producing plastic at ever higher volumes. Even if we perfect polymer-eating enzymes, we still must reduce unnecessary plastic, redesign materials for circularity, and build waste systems that prevent leakage in the first place. This is not a happy ending fairy tale The discovery of this fungus is not a happy ending story. It’s a credible new chapter. It suggests that nature is not passively suffering our material choices; it is responding, adapting, and experimenting in silence. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
It started with a harmless email, but SEBI’s BRSR and global procurement shifts have turned sustainability into a survival metric—forcing India’s supply chains to choose between measurement and irrelevance. The email that changed the week It begins the way most modern disruptions begin: not with a protest, not with a policy speech, but with an email that looks harmless until you open the attachment. A mid-sized manufacturer—supplying components to a large listed company—receives a message addressed with polite corporate warmth: “Dear Partner, we require your ESG data for the upcoming reporting cycle.” The attachment reads like a quiet audit of life inside the factory: electricity consumption, water use, waste handling, worker safety incidents, gender representation, grievance mechanisms. The owner reads it twice and mutters the line that has become India’s most honest ESG definition: “We make parts. Since when did we become a climate report?” That sentence matters because it captures the real arrival of ESG in India. Not as philosophy. Not as a corporate “initiative.” As procurement. As an operational demand that travels down the supply chain with the force of a purchase order. Not CSR 2.0—an entirely different species India understands CSR. It is familiar, mandated, and often visible: projects, schools, sanitation drives, community initiatives. ESG is different, and the difference is not cosmetic. CSR is largely about what a company contributes outward—money and projects for social good. ESG is about how the company operates inward—its environmental footprint, how it treats people, and how it governs itself. CSR can be meaningful even if the core business remains unchanged. ESG pushes on the core business by design. That is why ESG feels intrusive to many promoters and plant heads: it is not asking for generosity; it is asking for systems. Why ESG became unavoidable: the three pressures that converged ESG did not rise because corporations suddenly became kinder. It rose because three forces converged—investors, regulators, and a generation that treats transparency as the minimum price of trust. Investor pressure came first. Global capital began asking an unforgiving question: what risks will break this business over ten years? Climate risk, labour risk, governance risk. ESG scores became shorthand for long-term resilience. Regulatory pressure followed. Countries started pushing sustainability disclosure out of the voluntary “good news” genre and into standardised reporting. And generational pressure grew louder: employees and consumers increasingly expect purpose, transparency, and ethical conduct—especially where talent and trust are strategic assets. Put together, ESG became a new language of risk, capital, and legitimacy. The world’s ESG machinery: one destination, different routes: If you look across major democratic economies, the direction is broadly shared: less storytelling, more standardization; fewer glossy claims, more audit trails. The routes, however, differ sharply. Europe: the strict school that is now rewriting its homework: The European Union built the world’s most comprehensive ESG architecture: corporate reporting rules, financial product disclosure rules, and a shared definition of what counts as “green.” On corporate reporting, the European Commission notes that the first companies subject to the CSRD apply the new rules for the first time in the 2024 financial year, with reports published in 2025. On financial markets, SFDR has been in application since March 2021. And then there is the EU Taxonomy, a common definition meant to scale sustainable investment and protect against greenwashing. But even Europe is adjusting. Reuters has reported on EU proposals to loosen or cut back parts of sustainability rules to reduce regulatory burden and improve competitiveness. That recalibration matters for India because it underlines a practical truth: ESG frameworks succeed when measurement capacity keeps pace with disclosure ambition. The UK: climate-first discipline, then alignment to global standards: The UK approach has been pragmatic: start with climate-related disclosure discipline, then build toward broader sustainability reporting alignment. The UK’s FCA has outlined its TCFD-aligned approach, and the UK government has published guidance on UK Sustainability Reporting Standards rooted in the evaluation and potential endorsement of IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards (IFRS S1 and IFRS S2). In plain terms, the UK is translating sustainability into the language of financial reporting culture—risk, governance, disclosure controls. The United States: a market that wants disclosure, and a system that litigates it: In the US, ESG has been shaped as much by courts and politics as by investor demand. The text notes that in March 2025 the US SEC stated it had voted to end its defense of climate disclosure rules requiring disclosure of climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions, and Reuters reported a US appeals court pausing challenges while awaiting clarity on the agency’s stance. The lesson for India here is operational, not ideological: when ESG becomes politically contested, compliance certainty suffers, even as market pressure continues through global customers and overseas regulations that still force disclosures through supply chains. Japan: disclosure as muscle memory: Japan’s ESG movement has leaned heavily on disciplined corporate disclosure norms. The document cites a Financial Stability Board note that Japan enhanced sustainability disclosure requirements in annual securities reports, applied starting with reports for the financial year ended March 2023. Japan’s advantage is cultural and institutional: systems and governance are treated as core business hygiene, not side projects. Australia and Canada: standards, laws, and a staged runway: Australia has moved into sustainability standards infrastructure, including climate disclosure standards issued by the AASB, and policy/professional guidance describing a mandatory climate-related disclosure regime beginning from 1 January 2025 under Corporations Act amendments. Canada has issued CSDS 1 and CSDS 2 aligned with ISSB standards, with an effective date of 1 January 2025 on a voluntary basis, as reflected in the IFRS jurisdictional snapshot. Together, these models reinforce one steady truth: ESG becomes real when it is connected to standards, enforcement, and assurance pathways—not merely encouraged. The baseline that keeps showing up: IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 Behind all this is an effort to converge. IFRS S1 and IFRS S2—issued by the ISSB—are positioned as a global baseline for sustainability and climate-related financial disclosures, effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024. The implication is blunt: India does not need to copy the EU or the US, but Indian disclosures must be credible, comparable, and investment-grade. India’s ESG turning point: when BRSR changed the rules of the room If ESG is a global language, India’s most important translator has been SEBI’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR). The document notes that SEBI introduced BRSR through a circular in May 2021, positioning it as a replacement for older reporting formats and setting the stage for standardised ESG disclosure for listed entities. Over time, BRSR became mandatory for the top 1,000 listed companies (by market capitalisation), beginning with the FY 2022–23 reporting cycle—shifting ESG reporting from “best practice” to “market expectation.” Then came BRSR Core: a subset of key metrics paired with assurance requirements and, crucially, an expanding expectation of value-chain disclosures. It is worth pausing here because this is how ESG becomes operational in the real world: not by speeches, but by templates, metrics, and assurance. The hidden twist: ESG refuses to stay inside the listed company On paper, the obligation begins with listed entities—especially the top 1,000. In practice, ESG behaves like an ink spill: it spreads outward into suppliers, logistics partners, contractors, and service providers. That is why value-chain ESG disclosure is such a sensitive issue. It effectively pushes reporting burdens onto smaller firms that may lack the systems to respond. This is not a minor detail. It is the frontline tension in ESG implementation: transparency is necessary, but the capacity to measure accurately is uneven. In this context, the “polite email” is not a request; it is the supply chain being converted into a data system. The text notes that Reuters has reported SEBI’s plan to review ESG disclosure requirements with particular attention to supply chain transparency, after concerns that obligations can be too burdensome for smaller firms and risk producing “paper disclosures,” while SEBI documentation has reflected adjustments to timelines for value-chain disclosures and assurance. India, in other words, is running ESG on two tracks at once: acceleration for large firms, capacity constraints for the rest. How ESG is actually implemented inside companies Strip away the slogans and ESG implementation looks like a sequence of internal changes. A company has to decide what it will measure—emissions, water, waste, safety, diversity, board oversight—and how those data will be collected across plants, offices, and subsidiaries. It must define responsibility: who owns the data, who verifies it, who signs it. It must build governance: board-level oversight, policies, grievance systems, and internal controls that make reported numbers auditable. And increasingly, it must obtain external assurance—particularly for BRSR Core under the glide path SEBI has outlined. This is why ESG can feel heavy. It requires companies to build measurement muscle, not just publish ambition. The ratings problem: when the report cards do not agree As ESG gained popularity, ratings multiplied. Then they began disagreeing—often dramatically—because methodologies vary. India’s regulatory response, as captured in the text, has been to move toward greater oversight. SEBI has issued a Master Circular for ESG Rating Providers (ERPs), embedding them within a regulated framework. The document notes that even rating withdrawal—when and how an ESG rating can be withdrawn—has attracted attention, signaling that India is treating ESG as a market integrity issue, not a marketing trend. When ESG becomes tangible: cases that make the theory sweat The best way to understand ESG is to see it where it becomes operational. Consider a major airport setting measurable sustainability targets, shifting energy sourcing, and publicly reporting performance highlights. The text points to Mumbai’s international airport ecosystem highlighting milestones such as achieving renewable electricity use and carbon neutrality claims for specific scopes, showing how large infrastructure operators integrate ESG into operations and disclosure. Consider a major engineering and construction group reporting reductions in greenhouse gas emission intensity and embedding disclosures in formal sustainability reporting—turning ESG into year-on-year operational discipline rather than one-time messaging. Consider energy firms building decentralized renewable solutions—such as rural microgrids—where the “E” intersects directly with livelihoods and enterprise. And then consider the “G” that changes behaviour fastest: governance practices where ESG goals influence leadership incentives. When executive compensation is linked to ESG outcomes, ESG stops being an “initiative” and becomes part of how power is rewarded. These are not just good stories. They are signals that ESG is becoming institutional practice in parts of corporate India. How ESG is performing now: progress with friction The progress, as your document frames it, is real. BRSR has institutionalized disclosure. Assurance norms are expanding. ESG funds and products are becoming more structured, and SEBI has issued frameworks for ESG investing and related disclosures by mutual funds. Capital is also being aligned with sustainability through instruments such as sovereign green bonds, with government disclosures noting issuances and expenditure alignment under eligible categories. But performance is mixed, and the friction points are serious. One friction is data quality and cost: many MSMEs struggle with data collection, compliance costs, and a lack of standardized frameworks. A second is greenwashing risk—the gap between narrative and reality. The more ESG becomes reputational currency, the stronger the incentive to polish rather than transform. A third is the value-chain burden: recent reporting indicates SEBI has been reviewing ESG disclosure requirements, including supply-chain transparency, in response to concerns that obligations may be too burdensome for smaller firms and may produce “paper disclosures” rather than honest measurement. So ESG today is both a leap forward and a stress test: it is forcing transparency, while exposing measurement inequality. ESG does not sit alone: India’s national trajectory is the background weather The document makes a critical connection that companies sometimes forget: ESG is not a corporate island. India’s broader sustainability agenda—net-zero by 2070, increasing renewables, expanding carbon sinks—forms the national context within which corporate ESG strategies evolve. Public systems are also building comparability through frameworks like the SDG India Index, which reports an overall national score and tracks progress across goals—reminding companies that sustainability is not only corporate; it is systemic. This matters because ESG is ultimately about resilience in the same terrain where public policy, climate risk, and social inclusion operate together. Three futures for ESG in India—and the one question that decides which future we get The current scenario is disclosure-driven acceleration: ESG is spreading because markets and regulators have made it difficult for large companies to ignore. The possible scenario is capacity-building at scale: simplified tools for MSMEs, common measurement standards, phased reporting that prioritises accuracy over speed, and assurance ecosystems that do not become a compliance cartel. The long-term scenario is structural transformation: ESG becomes a driver of industrial competitiveness. Companies that decarbonize early, manage water risk, improve workforce stability, and govern transparently will likely win cheaper capital, stronger partnerships, and more resilient supply chains. But the roadblocks are real. If ESG becomes a documentation race, it produces fatigue, not transformation. If value-chain requirements arrive without measurement capacity, they invite unreliable reporting. If rating systems remain inconsistent or conflicted, they can distort incentives rather than improve behavior. So the next phase of ESG in India must answer one hard question honestly: are we building the ability to measure, or merely the ability to narrate? The operational close: who must do what, now, without hiding behind jargon The document closes with a practical compliance reality: ESG execution is not a motivational poster. It is category-specific work that differs depending on what you are. If you are a listed entity—especially a large-cap—the first discipline is to confirm whether you fall within the cohort where ESG disclosure through BRSR has become a market mandate, and to align your reporting calendar accordingly. From there, you must implement the BRSR Core framework and plan for assurance in line with SEBI’s framework direction, while building board-level ESG governance that assigns owners, approvers, and internal controls so ESG numbers are auditable, not ornamental. If you sit within the top cohort relevant to value-chain disclosures, you must also align supplier data processes to value-chain disclosure expectations and the revised timeline adjustments reflected in SEBI documentation—because, for you, “ESG” includes how your supply chain behaves, not only how your own facilities behave. If you are a supplier to a listed entity, you must assume the procurement reality will repeat: ESG data requests will arrive as part of doing business, not as a special initiative. Your defensible position is to maintain a basic ESG data pack—energy, water, waste, safety incidents, workforce demographics, grievance mechanisms—so you are not improvising every reporting cycle. And you must negotiate timelines and scope realistically, because the system itself is acknowledging the risk of “paper disclosures” when measurement capacity is thin. If you are an ESG Rating Provider, your responsibilities rise sharply because your outputs influence investment decisions. The text makes clear that SEBI has brought ERPs under a regulated framework through its Master Circular, and that withdrawal practices are being treated as a market integrity issue, not a marketing accessory. If you are a mutual fund or AMC offering ESG schemes, the expectation is compliance with SEBI’s circular establishing the ESG scheme category and related disclosures—because ESG, in finance, is judged not only by intent but also by disclosure discipline. Across all categories, the document insists on one grounding truth: ESG is not only reporting. It is also compliance mapping. Companies must map the “E” and “S” into Indian law and operational practice—updating workforce compliance systems in light of the four Labour Codes (as referenced in the text), and mapping obligations under E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 and the EPR regime where applicable. Finally, if your investors or customers operate globally, you cannot treat ESG as a local paperwork exercise. You must track convergence to global baselines such as IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, and if you operate in or export into the EU ecosystem, you must understand that frameworks like CSRD, SFDR, and the EU Taxonomy shape what your European partners will ask you to prove. And this brings us back to the factory owner and the spreadsheet. The first email feels like an annoyance. The second feels like a new cost. By the fifth, the company realises the truth ESG has been trying to say without slogans: the future belongs to businesses that can prove how they operate—not only explain what they believe. If India gets measurement right, ESG can become more than a reporting regime. It can become a competitiveness and justice framework—one that rewards businesses not for sounding responsible, but for operating responsibly. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
The night the ledger learned the word “society” It is late March. The office lights are still on. Coffee has stopped being a beverage and started behaving like a policy. A finance head, a CSR manager, and an anxious CFO are staring at the same figure—one that feels less like a number and more like a deadline. “Have we spent the CSR amount?” A pause follows. Then the quieter sentence that usually comes next, because it carries the weight of law. “If we don’t, we’ll have to disclose reasons.” “And if we still don’t?” “There are troubles ahead.” That single exchange captures the full arc of India’s mandated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) story: it began as a disclosure-first experiment and evolved into a tighter compliance-and-accountability regime—deadlines, designated accounts for unspent money, stronger reporting, and the expectation that impact can be measured, not merely described. Before the law: when CSR meant “philanthropy with a founder’s signature” Long before CSR became statutory, corporate giving in India often looked like a family tradition. A hospital near a plant. A school in a hometown. Scholarships for a district where the brand was born. Some of it was heartfelt, some reputational, but much of it lived outside a national framework. The absence of common standards created a predictable twin outcome: genuine work often stayed invisible beyond local memory, and superficial work could hide behind photo opportunities. Then came the turning point: Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, which made India one of the first countries to legally mandate CSR spending at scale. The legal core, in plain language: what the law actually asks companies to do India’s CSR design is deceptively simple to state and complicated to execute. If a company is sufficiently large—measured by financial thresholds—it falls under CSR obligations. The headline norm is equally blunt: eligible companies should spend at least 2% of the average net profits of the previous three years on CSR activities. The law nudges companies toward proximity and legitimacy by saying they should give preference to local areas around their operations. And it limits what qualifies as CSR by linking it to Schedule VII, a defined menu of themes—poverty, health, education, sanitation, environment, and allied social priorities. This became the architecture: thresholds, the 2% norm, a defined theme list, and board-level disclosure. A policy that refused to stay still: the decade-plus timeline of tightening CSR became operational in the mid-2010s, but its real character emerged through iterative redesign. Early on, CSR often behaved like a “comply or explain” system: if you didn’t spend, you explained why in the board report. Over time, policymakers and observers saw the limits of explanation without enforcement. Then came the sharper phase. The Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019 introduced stronger discipline for unspent CSR amounts, including time-bound transfers—an attempt to stop CSR budgets from merely rolling over as an annual excuse. In January 2021, amendments to CSR Rules tightened definitions, formalised implementation norms, and pushed CSR from “best effort” to something that increasingly resembles an auditable process. By 2022, reporting became more structured through Form CSR-2, signalling that CSR would be treated not only as narrative, but also as standardised data. Mandated CSR, in other words, has behaved like a living system—repeatedly corrected by the realities it created. The “who” behind CSR: an ecosystem, not a department CSR is often described as “companies spending money.” In practice, it is an ecosystem. Boards and CSR committees approve policies and budgets; CSR managers negotiate between community need, business expectation, and compliance deadlines; implementing agencies—NGOs, trusts, Section 8 companies—turn budgets into work; auditors check whether the narrative aligns with the books; communities experience CSR not as policy but as a water tap, a classroom, a clinic, a livelihood tool—or as a promise that never arrived. As the rules tightened, the ecosystem became more formal. Compliance expectations for implementing entities hardened, including references to CSR-1 registration mechanisms in the evolving CSR architecture. The uncomfortable geography of CSR: money follows corporate comfort If one wants to understand both the strengths and blind spots of CSR, one must look at maps, not brochures. CSR flows tend to cluster where corporate India clusters. Even within a state, CSR can concentrate heavily in a capital district while multiple districts receive nothing, revealing that CSR funding often follows operational presence and execution comfort more than development need. The preference-for-local-area principle is ethically intuitive—communities living beside industrial sites deserve a share of prosperity. Yet the same preference can reinforce inequality because corporate geography is not human-need geography. The ground reality: why early CSR “worked” and why it still felt thin In the early years, CSR money flowed toward sectors where outcomes were visible and documentation was easier. Education and healthcare dominated. The pattern was almost cinematic in its repetition: a company adopts a government school, repairs classrooms, distributes learning devices, builds toilets, funds scholarships; another company equips clinics, runs health camps, supports mobile medical vans. Then the first twist arrived. CSR became efficient, but sometimes too shallow. NGOs reported a familiar constraint: short-term, tightly restricted funding with limited support for the organisational capacity that sustains impact. CSR often paid for outcomes without paying for the muscle needed to deliver outcomes reliably year after year. The pandemic chapter: CSR discovers the emergency lane When COVID-19 hit, CSR revealed its most valuable trait: speed. Companies pivoted toward healthcare infrastructure, resilience, and digital education, because needs were immediate and undeniable. The boardroom debates changed tone. CSR managers who once argued “education versus environment” began asking “oxygen plant or ICU beds?” NGOs that once wrote proposals for skill training wrote proposals for protective equipment, ration kits, and vaccination awareness. CSR became a rapid-response channel at its best. But the pandemic also made old questions louder: should CSR become a substitute for public expenditure, should corporate funds be routed into central pools or remain close to community delivery, and where does accountability sit when money moves fast? The limitations that forced redesign: why “explain” was not enough A decade into mandated CSR, several persistent constraints stood out across policy discussions, audit observations, NGO experience, and public scrutiny. Unspent funds were too common; some companies treated CSR as a year-end scramble while others delayed due to project risk or weak partner availability. Measurement was thin; reporting often counted rupees and beneficiaries rather than verified outcomes. Geographic concentration stayed stubborn. Implementing ecosystems struggled with documentation burdens, delayed disbursements, and weak access to corporate networks. And CSR sometimes slid into branding—visibility rewarded more than substance. The summary was hard to ignore: CSR mobilised money, but money alone was not impact. The tightening cycle: how CSR became more auditable without killing initiative The redesign logic became clear: keep CSR flexible enough for innovation, but strict enough to prevent negligence and misuse. The 2019 amendment pushed time-bound treatment of unspent funds, often discussed through the lens of an “Unspent CSR Account” mechanism for ongoing projects. The 2021 strengthening of rules moved CSR closer to audit discipline. Penalties for defaults tied to unspent transfers became more explicit. Impact assessment became sharper—especially for large obligations. Reporting, via CSR-2, became more standardised, signalling a shift from “spend and report” to “spend, prove, and learn.” The current scale: big numbers, persistent questions By FY 2023–24, CSR spending had reached very large national scale. Parliamentary disclosures showed CSR expenditure totals rising from ₹27,141.45 crore in FY 2021–22 to ₹34,908.75 crore in FY 2023–24. Education and health remained dominant, while newer categories—culture, animal welfare, environment-linked work, contributions to specified funds—also appeared more visibly. This is the paradox of mandated CSR: it can generate reliable national funding, yet it must continuously fight the gravitational pull toward safe, familiar, easy-to-document interventions. The global mirror: how major democracies handle “CSR” without mandating “2% spend” To compare India with other democratic economies, one must first admit the definitional difference. In many jurisdictions, what India calls CSR spending is split into obligations that look more like risk governance than charity: director duties, modern slavery reporting, non-financial reporting, and supply-chain due diligence. The United Kingdom offers a clear example of responsibility embedded in governance. Under Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, directors are expected to promote the success of the company while having regard to stakeholders—employees, suppliers, customers, community, and environment. That is not CSR spending; it is responsibility embedded into decision-making. The UK also tightened supply-chain accountability through Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, requiring certain organisations to publish an annual statement describing steps taken to prevent modern slavery in operations and supply chains, with the commonly referenced turnover trigger. The strength is clarity and transparency; the weakness is equally obvious—statements can become performative if enforcement and market consequences are weak. Denmark is often cited for making CSR reporting itself mandatory for certain companies through its financial statements framework, effectively turning CSR into an accountability-through-disclosure regime rather than a spending mandate. This early institutionalisation of CSR reporting strengthened transparency, but it still relies on market and civil society pressure to convert reporting into transformation. France took a different route, treating responsibility as prevention. Its 2017 duty of vigilance law requires large companies to publish an annual vigilance plan to identify and prevent serious human rights and environmental impacts across operations and certain business relationships. Compared to India’s CSR, France is not saying “spend 2%.” It is saying “prove you are not causing serious harm—and show your plan.” Germany’s supply-chain approach similarly requires covered companies to maintain risk management systems, preventive and remedial measures, complaint procedures, and reporting focused on human rights and environmental harms. Germany also offers a caution that democracies repeatedly face: once responsibility becomes a compliance machine, debates about burden can trigger exemptions or redesigns. At the European Union level, responsibility is increasingly expressed through two big levers: sustainability reporting, where large and listed companies publish regular reports on social and environmental risks and impacts; and sustainability due diligence, with a directive that entered into force in July 2024 aiming to ensure companies identify and address adverse impacts across operations and value chains. The strength is comparability; the risk is checkbox compliance and the politics of scope and phase-ins. Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018 similarly uses a reporting-and-registry logic for entities above a revenue threshold, pushing supply-chain transparency through annual statements. Canada’s supply-chain framework, effective from January 1, 2024, follows the same directional philosophy: increase transparency and encourage responsible practices in relation to forced labour and child labour risks. The United States, by contrast, remains largely voluntary and market-driven on CSR: corporate giving and sustainability reporting exist, but there is no India-style statutory spending mandate at the federal level, and responsibility pressure comes through investor expectation, consumer trust, litigation risk, and sector-specific regulation. What India gets right, what India still struggles with, and what the world can learn India’s unique strength is predictability. Mandated CSR produces a steady flow of social funding that does not rely solely on leadership goodwill or brand strategy. It institutionalises corporate participation in social development. In voluntary CSR environments, philanthropic budgets can shrink sharply in downturns; India’s model is designed to resist that volatility. India’s core weakness is the temptation of “fast spend” over “deep change.” When the KPI feels like “spend by year-end,” there is a structural bias toward interventions that are easy to approve, disburse, and document—often necessary interventions, but not always transformative interventions. The global lesson is that democracies are converging on “responsibility as risk management.” India’s CSR focuses on outward contribution; many other frameworks focus on preventing inward harm and reporting it, especially across supply chains. These approaches are not rivals. They are complements. The direction of travel globally suggests that CSR-style spending alone will not satisfy expectations if core business operations generate social or environmental harm. The next decade: three futures for India’s CSR One future is already visible: CSR becomes more auditable, but not necessarily more impactful. India is moving toward auditable CSR through CSR-2 standardisation, stricter unspent handling, mandatory impact assessment for large obligations, and tighter control on administrative overhead. This increases integrity, but can also turn CSR into paperwork—especially for companies that treat it as a statutory irritant rather than a strategic instrument. A second future is possible and preferable: CSR becomes multi-year and evidence-led, with fewer but deeper programmes, better partner due diligence, stronger district-level diagnosis, and honest outcome measurement. A third future is structural: CSR merges into a broader responsibility regime. As global rules tighten on supply-chain accountability, Indian exporters and global suppliers will face external responsibility expectations regardless of domestic CSR rules. CSR spending may become one pillar of a wider responsible business architecture that includes human-rights diligence, climate transition planning, workforce protections, and governance transparency. Across all futures, the biggest roadblock is capacity: credible implementing agencies, reliable data systems, and internal governance maturity. Without these, CSR and due diligence frameworks can degrade into documents that look impressive and do little. The India CSR checklist If you are a company that crossed any one of the CSR thresholds in the immediately preceding financial year—net worth at or above ₹500 crore, turnover at or above ₹1,000 crore, or net profit at or above ₹5 crore—then CSR compliance is no longer optional. You are expected to compute the CSR obligation as 2% of the average net profits of the preceding three years, approve and follow a CSR policy, ensure spending is on eligible activities under Schedule VII themes, and make the prescribed disclosures in your board/annual reporting. If you are covered, you generally need a CSR Committee. However, you must pay attention to how the law relaxes committee requirements in specific situations. Where an independent director is not required under Section 149, the CSR Committee can be formed without an independent director. If your required CSR spend does not exceed ₹50 lakh in a financial year, the law allows you to skip constituting a CSR Committee; in that case, the Board itself discharges the functions of the CSR Committee. This is not an exemption from CSR—spend discipline, unspent handling, reporting, and compliance expectations still apply. If you implement CSR through an outside agency—an NGO, a trust, or a Section 8 company—you must treat eligibility and registration as non-negotiable compliance hygiene. Many categories of implementing entities are expected to have Income Tax registrations such as 12A and 80G and to be registered through the CSR-1 mechanism, so that the chain of accountability is traceable. If you are spending CSR, remember that CSR is not allowed to become an internal administrative empire. Administrative overheads must remain within the permitted cap and should not exceed 5% of total CSR expenditure for the financial year. If you are a large CSR obligor, impact assessment is no longer a matter of taste. Companies with an average CSR obligation of at least ₹10 crore in the three immediately preceding financial years face mandatory impact assessment expectations for projects above the specified outlay thresholds and with enough time elapsed after completion; the impact report must be placed before the Board and attached to CSR reporting. If you do not spend the full CSR amount in a financial year, you must treat “unspent CSR” as a compliance event, not a footnote. The rule operates on two tracks. If the unspent amount is not linked to an ongoing project, it must be transferred to specified funds under Schedule VII within the prescribed timeline. If it is linked to an ongoing project, it must be transferred to the “Unspent CSR Account” and spent within the permitted window; failing that, it must be transferred as required. Finally, reporting is no longer just narrative. Companies must file CSR disclosures in the prescribed format in board/annual reporting, and CSR-2 has been introduced as a structured reporting mechanism, with timelines governed by the applicable notifications. That is the compliance spine. The strategic question is what separates mature CSR from ritual CSR: whether the company builds multi-year programmes, invests in credible partners, measures outcomes honestly, and resists the temptation to treat CSR as a March transaction rather than a long social contract. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
A noon sun, a cooling city At midday in the Emirates, the sun does not merely shine—it asserts itself. The glass towers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi throw the light back into the sky, the roads shimmer, and inside homes, malls, metro stations, hospitals, and data centres, cooling becomes the invisible infrastructure of daily life. In a place where heat is not an occasional discomfort but a defining condition, electricity is not a convenience. It is continuity. That is why the UAE’s clean-energy transition cannot be treated as a fashionable climate headline. It is a national resilience project—about powering cities without poisoning the air, about keeping the lights stable in a future of higher temperatures, and about ensuring the economy stays competitive as the world rewires itself away from high-carbon growth. The UAE has explicitly framed this as a net-zero journey to 2050, built through a national strategy and major capital deployment. And like the India-focused narrative in your CleanEnergy document, the real test is whether it becomes a “people’s story” and not only a policy story. In the UAE, that “people” lens looks slightly different: not village electrification, but a heat-stressed urban economy, an energy-intensive water system, globally connected trade and finance, and a society where state capacity and corporate execution move in tight coordination. What “clean energy” means in the UAE context In the simplest sense, clean energy is electricity (and, increasingly, fuels) that dramatically reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and local pollution compared to conventional fossil generation. In the UAE’s practical playbook, this is not one technology—it is a portfolio. It includes utility-scale solar—because sunlight is abundant and predictable. It includes nuclear—because a modern economy needs stable baseload power that is not hostage to intermittency. It includes storage and grid intelligence—because high solar penetration requires flexibility. It includes efficiency—because the cheapest unit of clean energy is the unit not consumed, especially in cooling-heavy buildings. And it increasingly includes hydrogen and related derivatives—because some sectors cannot be fully electrified and will still need molecules, not only electrons. This is precisely why the UAE’s stated pathway is structured across multiple sectors—not only power, but also industry, transport, buildings, waste, and agriculture. Why the UAE needs clean energy urgently—beyond reputation The UAE’s clean-energy story is often narrated internationally as “a post-oil pivot.” That is true, but incomplete. First, the country remains substantially tied to hydrocarbons, and this creates a difficult balancing act: diversifying away from oil while still benefiting from oil revenues and navigating global scrutiny around production and export. Second, the UAE is physically vulnerable to climate impacts—extreme heat, water scarcity, and sea level rise—risks that threaten coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. Clean energy does not solve all of this, but it reduces the problem the country can control: its own emissions trajectory and the carbon intensity of its growth. Third, the UAE’s development model is electricity-intensive. Cooling demand rises as temperatures rise; desalination and water management carry heavy energy loads; and the next economic wave—AI, cloud computing, advanced manufacturing—adds further demand. In this context, clean energy is not austerity. It is a way to keep growth possible without creating a future where the cost of carbon (financially and physically) becomes unmanageable. The net-zero pivot: from announcement to architecture The UAE’s declared anchor is the “UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative,” positioned as a national climate action plan and an economic-social stimulus. It was publicly announced in 2021. Under this umbrella, the UAE has aligned its energy strategy toward a clean-energy share that is explicitly quantified. The Energy Strategy 2050 envisions a 2050 energy mix including 44% clean energy (with other shares allocated to gas, “clean coal,” and nuclear). Your UAE draft also highlights the ambition of reaching “44% clean energy by mid-century” and tripling renewable share. That is the strategic intent. The more interesting part is how intent becomes infrastructure—and then becomes rules, markets, and behaviour. Three mega-projects that changed the narrative Step into the UAE’s clean-energy transition and three names come up repeatedly because they signal scale, credibility, and execution. Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park is designed to reach 5,000 MW by 2030. It is not simply “a big solar plant”; it is an industrial ecosystem, built in phases, with a strong Independent Power Producer (IPP) model that pulls private capital and global operators into a state-led plan. It also showcases technology ambition: DEWA records include a concentrated solar power tower measured at 263.126 metres, reflecting a push beyond “standard PV” into dispatchable solar systems. Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafra Solar PV project is emblematic of the UAE’s ability to set world-scale benchmarks and drive down prices through competitive procurement. Your draft cites it at 2 GW. Masdar’s own project description confirms the 2 GW scale and details the ownership structure (TAQA 40%, Masdar 20%, with the remaining 40% split between EDF and JinkoPower). Then there is Barakah, the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world, positioned as the backbone of stable, zero-carbon power. Your UAE document notes four operational reactors providing around 25% of electricity needs. ENEC similarly describes Barakah’s four reactors producing roughly 40 TWh annually, equivalent to around 25% of the UAE’s electricity. Together, these three projects tell a strategic story: solar for scale and cost, nuclear for stability, and a grid that increasingly must behave like a smart balancing machine. Key players: the UAE’s clean-energy coalition What looks like “the UAE” from the outside is, in practice, a well-coordinated coalition of state institutions, regulators, and corporate champions. In Dubai, DEWA is central—both as system operator and as the orchestrator of flagship initiatives like the Solar Park and distributed solar programmes. In Abu Dhabi, Masdar is a principal clean-energy vehicle with an explicitly strengthened shareholder structure: TAQA holds 43%, Mubadala 33%, and ADNOC 24% (with ADNOC leading Masdar’s green hydrogen business under the same overall partnership). Reuters reporting also highlights Masdar’s rapid scale-up and global capacity expansion, reinforcing its role as a flagship player rather than a symbolic entity. On the nuclear side, ENEC and its operating entity Nawah are the defining institutional actors behind Barakah’s delivery and operations. And across the system, TAQA (especially transmission), Mubadala (capital), and ADNOC (energy incumbency and transition bets) shape how fast, how credibly, and how globally the UAE can move. How the new clean-energy regime is being implemented: law, administration, markets A transition of this magnitude does not succeed on projects alone. It succeeds when rules and routines change. One turning point is the UAE’s Federal Decree-Law No. (11) of 2024 on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects, which establishes a national legal framework—assigning responsibilities, requiring emissions monitoring and reporting approaches, and creating a National Carbon Credit Registry under the Ministry. Your UAE draft explicitly flags this law and the National Register for Carbon Credits as part of the regulatory architecture. This kind of legislation matters because it turns “voluntary sustainability” into compliance behaviour—creating consistent expectations for corporations, including those operating in free zones, as several professional analyses have noted. Alongside federal law, administrative systems operationalise participation: In Dubai, Shams Dubai enables households and building owners to install solar PV and connect to DEWA’s grid, using the electricity onsite and exporting surplus back to the network. This is not only “green”; it is a behavioural mechanism—converting consumers into partial producers and normalising decentralised generation in a city built on centralised infrastructure. The UAE’s grid-balancing ambition is also visible in storage-linked infrastructure. DEWA’s pumped-storage hydro project in Hatta is designed at 250 MW with 1,500 MWh storage capacity—explicitly intended to store clean electricity (including from solar) and release it when needed. This is the kind of “behind-the-scenes” project that makes solar-heavy systems reliable at night, during dust events, or at peak evening demand. Markets and procurement models are the third pillar. The IPP approach—explicitly cited by DEWA in relation to the Solar Park—brings private developers into long-term structured contracts, supporting bankable investment. Corporate and civil participation: what it looks like on the ground Corporate participation in the UAE is not an “add-on”; it is built into the project architecture and finance ecosystem. Large-scale plants like Al Dhafra PV show multi-entity project companies and global partnerships. International partnerships also expand the UAE’s influence beyond its borders—PACE, the U.S.-UAE Partnership for Accelerating Clean Energy, aims to catalyse $100 billion and deploy 100 GW of clean energy globally by 2035, positioning the UAE as a climate-finance and project-deployment node. On the finance side, global reporting points to UAE-backed transition funding platforms—such as ALTERRA-related commitments—aimed at mobilising significantly larger pools of capital into transition projects. Civil and community participation in the UAE tends to be structured through “enabled adoption” rather than grassroots improvisation. Rooftop solar under Shams Dubai is one example. Another is the slow reshaping of demand: Dubai’s Green Building Regulations explicitly aim to reduce energy and water consumption and improve building performance. Mobility is also a visible public interface. DEWA’s EV Green Charger initiative began with early installations in 2015 and has expanded materially since then, reflecting an administrative push to make EV adoption practical rather than aspirational. In short: the UAE’s “civil participation” is often mediated through utilities, building codes, incentive structures, and access to infrastructure—designed to shift millions of small choices in a consistent direction. Trends and possibilities ahead: what the UAE is likely to do next Your UAE draft points to hydrogen as a strategic frontier, aiming for top-tier production capability by 2031. Multiple external references describe UAE ambitions for low-carbon hydrogen scale by the early 2030s, reinforcing that this is not a rhetorical add-on but a core pillar of the next phase. The second trend is “firm clean power”—renewables that behave like baseload via storage, grid control, and hybridisation. Reuters reporting on Masdar initiatives has underlined this ambition to provide uninterrupted clean power, signalling the country’s intent to solve intermittency at industrial scale rather than accepting it as a limitation. Third, AI and advanced digital optimisation will become a defining layer—both because the UAE is investing heavily in AI as an economic pillar and because AI can materially improve forecasting, predictive maintenance, and grid dispatch at high renewable penetration. Finally, climate-tech capital and innovation ecosystems are likely to deepen. Your UAE draft cites more than $400 million in climate-tech investment in the 2018–2022 period. A regional estimate also suggests the UAE captured a large share of MENA climate-tech funding over that timeframe. Care and caution: what the UAE must guard against Your UAE draft is clear that ambition does not remove constraints—it reveals them. There is the structural tension of hydrocarbon dependence, which can send mixed signals if fossil expansion and clean-energy leadership appear to move in parallel without a credible decline pathway. There is the technical challenge of integrating intermittent renewables into a grid under fast-growing demand, which requires storage, grid upgrades, and operational sophistication. There is also the risk of over-reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a substitute for reducing fossil reliance—especially if CCS is treated as a reputational shield rather than a carefully governed, transparently monitored decarbonisation tool. And there are UAE-specific environmental cautions. Solar in desert environments faces dust/soiling challenges; cleaning regimes can create water trade-offs; large footprints can pressure habitats if siting is not rigorous; and extreme heat can affect equipment performance and cooling demand in ways that amplify peak loads. Climate vulnerability—heat, water stress, sea-level risk—adds urgency, but it also raises the bar for resilience planning. The policy lesson here mirrors the global examples your draft invokes: countries that succeed do not only build generation; they build systems—strong targets, grid integration, efficiency-first building policy, and credible phase-down trajectories where possible. For the UAE, the “system build” must also include high-integrity carbon accounting (especially under the new climate law), strong enforcement capacity, and a disciplined approach to avoiding greenwashing. The UAE’s clean energy story, told plainly The UAE is attempting something few hydrocarbon economies have pursued with this degree of visible scale: simultaneously funding a clean-energy buildout, creating legal and administrative frameworks for accountability, and positioning itself as a global platform for deployment and finance. But the true success metric will not be whether a strategy document is well-written or a solar park is photographed from space. It will be whether the Emirates can make clean power reliable through the night, affordable through peak summer, credible under global scrutiny, and resilient against the physical climate realities already arriving. That is when the story stops being “UAE builds megaprojects” and becomes what your India narrative calls the real destination: a people’s story—of continuity, health, and dignity—adapted to the unique demands of a modern desert nation. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
A Different Kind of Light In the sun-baked village of Kardapal, Odisha, the rhythm of life used to follow the flicker of electricity. For Kuni Dehury, a silk reeler, every power cut meant another hour stolen from her already long day. The kerosene lamp filled the room with smoke, her eyes with tears, and her lungs with pain. Yet the work had to go on. Today, that same house hums with a quiet, steady sound: a solar-powered silk reeling machine. The light no longer burns kerosene. It glows clean and constant. Kuni’s story is not just about one woman’s improved livelihood—it is about how India’s clean energy transition is transforming lives, one household at a time. This is no longer a policy story. It is a people’s story—a story of work, health, and dignity, of how the government, civil society, and citizens together are powering a billion dreams. The Solar Shift: From Fields to Factories—and Kitchens India, blessed with over 300 sunny days a year, is now the world’s third-largest producer of solar energy. But the most transformative stories are not about vast solar parks—they are about rooftops, fields, and small enterprises. Take Munita Devi, a farmer from Jharkhand. For years, she depended on costly diesel pumps to irrigate her fields, spending over ₹10,000 annually on fuel. The pumps were noisy, unreliable, and polluting. When supply faltered, her crops withered. Everything changed in 2020 when she switched to a solar pump. Her fuel costs vanished, her yields grew, and her savings helped send her children to better schools. For her, clean energy means more than power—it means progress. Government schemes like PM-KUSUM aim to solarise agricultural pumps and make farmers “prosumers”—both producers and consumers of energy. The PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana targets rooftop solar for one crore households, bringing independence from unreliable grids and relief from rising bills. Together, these initiatives mark a shift—from energy access to energy agency. When Energy Becomes Women’s Power In India’s rural homes, energy poverty has always carried a gendered burden. Women bear the time cost of collecting fuel, the health cost of smoky kitchens, and the safety cost of poorly lit streets. But clean energy is rewriting that script. In Rajasthan’s Alwar district, Meera Jatt leads a women-run dairy cooperative. For years, spoilage from unreliable refrigeration ate into profits. Now, solar-powered chillers keep milk fresh longer, reducing waste and increasing income. The women no longer depend on erratic power; they control it. Further west, Arti ben used to spend nearly sixty hours a month collecting firewood. A biogas unit in her backyard cut that to fifteen. With time saved, she joined a local handicraft collective, doubling her income. Across India, women are training as solar technicians, managing repairs, and earning independent incomes. Each story adds up to a quiet revolution: energy that gives women their time back, and their power too. The Heat Test: When Cooling Becomes Survival Every summer, heat waves test India’s power grid—and people’s resilience. In 2025, Delhi crossed 40°C in early April. Nights offered no respite, and electricity demand for cooling soared. Hospitals opened special heat wards, filling tubs with ice for patients collapsing from exhaustion. For millions, air-conditioning remains a luxury. But as global temperatures rise, cooling has become a necessity. Two-thirds of Indian households still experience some form of energy poverty, with outages disrupting lives daily. The poor suffer first and longest, relying on smoky stoves and dark nights. The wealthy, meanwhile, switch on diesel generators—solving their problem, but worsening the collective one. The heat crisis shows that energy is not just an economic issue—it is a public health imperative. A reliable, clean power supply is as vital to survival as water and food. The $400 Billion Challenge India’s clean-energy mission is vast—and expensive. Estimates suggest that $400 billion will be needed by 2030 to build capacity, expand transmission, and develop storage. The government has moved decisively, but challenges remain. One bottleneck lies in plain sight: the financial health of state power distribution companies, or DISCOMs. Their chronic losses and delayed payments stall private investment and slow project momentum. Even when capacity grows—India added 44.5 GW in 2025—transmission lags behind. Nearly 60 GW of renewable projects remain stuck because the grid cannot yet carry their power. The Green Energy Corridor, now in its second phase, aims to fix this gap. A major new line from Ladakh will transmit solar power from the high deserts to the national grid. But progress must quicken. Without strong transmission and storage, clean energy risks becoming a stranded asset. Coal’s Shadow—and the Health Cost We Ignore Coal still powers roughly 70% of India’s electricity. It is cheap, local, and reliable. For decades, it was the fuel that built modern India. But it also darkened the air. Some of the world’s most polluted cities are Indian. In the coal belts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, children cough through school days while the mines hum around them. This is not merely an environmental problem; it is a moral one. Burning fossil fuels undermines the right to health and the right to development. Indoor pollution from firewood kills more Indians every year than road accidents. Outdoor pollution, from coal plants and vehicles, cuts millions of lives short. The transition, therefore, is not about guilt—it is about survival. Phasing down coal will take time. Heavy industries still need steady, base-load power. Gas imports are too expensive for large-scale substitution. But the direction is clear. The government is investing in nuclear, hydro, green hydrogen, and renewables. Coal will fade—not because the world demands it, but because India’s people need clean air. The Equity Argument: India and the World Internationally, critics say India is not moving fast enough on climate action. But the numbers tell a different story. While India is the third-largest emitter in absolute terms, its per-capita emissions remain less than half the global average. At global climate summits, India argues from principle: those who polluted most must do most to fix it. This idea of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” enshrined in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, remains the foundation of India’s stance. Developed nations grew rich on fossil fuels; developing ones should not be punished for wanting light, mobility, and growth. Yet India is not shirking its duty. It has exceeded its COP26 target of 50% non-fossil capacity five years early. It leads coalitions like the International Solar Alliance, launched to help other nations harness clean energy. And it has invested billions from domestic budgets—often without waiting for global finance that never arrives. As one negotiator said at COP30, “We are buying time—and doing things on our own.” Lessons from the Global South India does not have to reinvent the wheel. Across the Global South, nations have built models that combine innovation with equity. Bangladesh scaled solar home systems through smart finance. Its IDCOL programme combined microcredit with after-sales service, installing over four million systems and reaching 18 million people. The lesson: finance and trust matter as much as technology. Kenya’s pay-as-you-go solar firms, such as M-KOPA, used mobile money to make solar affordable for low-income families. Households pay small instalments, building ownership over time. For India’s rooftop solar push, this could be game-changing. Vietnam grew too fast, adding solar capacity without planning grid expansion. The result: curtailment and wasted power. It’s a cautionary tale India is already heeding as it accelerates the Green Energy Corridor. South Africa used competitive bidding through its REIPPPP programme to attract private investment and drive down prices. India’s transparent procurement models can build on that. Brazil and Morocco leveraged blended finance to fund large renewable parks, while Uruguay achieved near-total renewable electricity through policy stability and long-term planning. The message for all of us is simple: the transition is not about speed alone—it’s about structure, continuity, and credibility. From Supply-Centric to People-Centric For years, India’s approach to energy was supply-driven: add capacity, build plants, extend grids. That mindset built scale—but now the focus must shift to people. We need to view energy as a development enabler, not just a sector. Hospitals, schools, small industries, and homes depend on reliable power. Energy reform must therefore include distribution reforms, demand management, and consumer engagement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken of “energy independence” as a pillar of India@2047. Ambitious goals—like expanding nuclear capacity tenfold and producing five million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030—show intent. But civil society, academia, and state governments must align to turn these numbers into realities. Environmental and social safeguards also matter. When renewable projects displace communities or degrade ecosystems, they lose legitimacy. A people’s transition must listen to those it aims to uplift. What We Must Do—Together The next decade is decisive. To build a clean, reliable energy future, we need a strategy that combines scale with sensitivity, and for the policy makers have a big role: Fix distribution reform: Strengthen DISCOMs to ensure that renewable power is financially viable.Build transmission first: Expand grids before adding generation, to avoid bottlenecks.Invest in flexibility: Develop battery storage, demand response, and time-of-use pricing.Empower decentralised systems: Treat mini-grids and rooftop solar as mainstream, not marginal.Include women: Energy access must also mean gender equity in training, employment, and ownership.Cool smarter: Make efficiency the first line of defence against rising heat.Secure materials: Develop circular supply chains for lithium, cobalt, and rare earths.Plan a just transition: Support coal-dependent regions with retraining and economic diversification.Protect the social contract: Prioritise transparency and consultation in clean-energy projects.Embed climate in development: Power hospitals, schools, and public transport as part of climate action. Each of these requires cooperation among government, industry, civil society, and citizens. The transition is not one ministry’s job—it is everyone’s mission. The Light in Kardapal Coal will not disappear overnight. Bureaucracy will slow some moves. Finance will remain a constraint. But the direction is irreversible. The will to change is now embedded in the country’s moral and economic DNA. If we want to measure success, we should not start with national dashboards or global rankings. We should start in Kardapal. Start with a woman whose silk work no longer stops when the grid fails. Start with a farmer whose pump runs on sunlight. Start with a family whose kitchen no longer fills with smoke. Start with a clinic that keeps the lights on through the heat. That is what powering a billion dreams means: an India where energy is not a privilege but a right, not an aspiration but an assurance—and where the light that shines in one village shows the path for us all. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
Meanwhile, Net Zero goals are also riddled with Economic and Technological Hurdles The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has embarked on an ambitious journey. It involves achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, a strategic initiative that aims to position the oil-dependent nation as a global leader in clean energy and sustainable development. Backed by significant funding and a well-rounded national strategy, the UAE has made measurable strides. It includes launching some of the world's largest solar projects and the first nuclear power plant in the whole of the Arab world. However, this bold transition is not without considerable challenges, as the country navigates a complex balance between diversifying its economy away from oil yet sustaining growth amidst escalating energy demands. A Visionary Strategy for a Post-Oil Universe The "UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative" has been the cornerstone of the nation's climate action plan. It outlines a pathway to a low-carbon future that also stimulates economic and social advancement. The strategy is built on more than 25 programs across six key sectors: power, industry, transport, buildings, waste, and agriculture. Central to this vision is the updated UAE Energy Strategy 2050, which aims to triple the share of renewable energy and achieve an energy mix of 44% clean energy by mid-century. This progressive shift is evident in flagship projects that have broken world records. Some of them are as follows: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park: This park is poised to be the world’s largest single-site solar park. It’s a project in Dubai that aims for generating a massive capacity of 5,000 MW of clean energy by 2030 and features the world's tallest concentrated solar power (CSP) tower. Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant: The first nuclear power plant in the Arab world, it has four operational reactors and currently provides a significant 25% of the UAE's total electricity needs ,thus effectively ensuring a stable, zero-carbon baseload power. Al Dhafra Solar PV Plant: One of the world's largest solar power facilities, with a capacity of 2 GW, it boasts of record-low electricity prices, demonstrating the economic viability of large-scale solar projects in the UAE's ecosystem.. All these initiatives, alongside the National Hydrogen Strategy, which aims to make the UAE one of the largest producers of hydrogen by 2031, underscores a robust commitment to energy diversification. The Roadblocks on the Green Pathway Despite such monumental momentum, the UAE's transition inherently faces several challenges. Economic Dependence on Hydrocarbons: The most prominent hurdle remains the UAE's heavy reliance on oil and gas exports, which account for approximately 30% of its GDP. Ramping up fossil fuel production for export, while simultaneously investing in domestic clean energy, presents mixed signals to the international community and risks locking the country into a high-emissions trajectory…something that is inconsistent with the 1.5°C warming limit of the Paris Agreement. Technological and Infrastructural Needs: Integrating intermittent renewable sources like solar and wind into the existing grid requires significant investment in cutting-edge energy storage technologies, such as advanced batteries and pumped-hydro storage. The UAE's rapid urbanization and industrial growth fuels an escalating energy demand, that requires consistent expansion of the power grid and infrastructure. The CCS Conundrum: A major component of the UAE's strategy relies on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology for both power generation and industrial applications. Critics argue that an overreliance on a technology that is not yet proven at scale for power generation can be a "smokescreen" for prolonging fossil fuel use, diverting resources from proven renewable energy alternatives. Environmental Vulnerability: The UAE is highly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change, including extreme heat, water scarcity, and rising sea levels, which threaten its huge coastal infrastructure and ecosystems. These environmental risks add urgency to the transition but also present tall challenges in terms of adaptation. Developed nations like Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal demonstrate lot of progress in clean energy transitions through massive wind/solar expansion, phasing out coal, and supportive policies, with Portugal nearing 80% renewables, Denmark leading in wind integration, and the Netherlands seeing huge solar growth, while nations like the UK and France focus on policy, housing retrofits, and nuclear/renewables integration for net-zero goals. Key paradigms of Progress: A pioneer in wind power, Denmark integrates high levels of variable renewables with combined heat & power (CHP) and strategic investments in various offshore wind islands, thus leading to a mammoth wind share in total energy. Meanwhile, Portugal has reached over 75% renewable electricity, phasing out coal by 2021, with rapid solar growth and targets for phasing down gas, thus aiming for near-total clean electricity by 2030. Likewise, Netherlands generated over half its electricity from wind and solar in 2023, with major offshore wind farms (Hollandse Kust Zuid) and widespread residential solar boosting clean energy share. Another major economy that demonstrates how to strategically transition away from fossil fuels is Germany. This European nation integrates significant renewable capacity despite challenges, as reported by German news agencies. On the other hand Lithuania rapidly accelerated the share of renewables to over 60% of the overall energy mix, ending reliance on Russian fossil fuels. It’s now aiming to become a net electricity exporter by 2030, catalysed by rooftop solar. France, on the other hand is phasing out coal and reducing fossil fuel consumption with a focus on energy efficiency in housing (a major emissions source) as part of its net-zero plan. UK too has achieved significant milestones, including its first full day without coal power and record offshore wind capacity, driving towards its net-zero target through a heady cocktail of policy and technology. What are the common Strategies & Success Factors in all these examples? These developed nations took a calibrated and strategic approach towards achieving clean energy and Net Zero goals. Some of them being as below: Strong Policy & Targets: All these nations set out ambitious national targets (e.g., 2030/2050) backed by supportive policies like feed-in tariffs and streamlined planning.Wind & Solar Dominance: There was a massive deployment of offshore and onshore wind, plus residential and utility-scale solar power.Grid Integration: Innovative solutions were deployed for integrating variable renewables, including energy islands and grid upgrades.Energy Efficiency: These countries prioritized tackling housing insulation and building retrofits to cut the net energy demand.Totally phasing Out Fossil Fuels: Deliberate plans were rolled out across the geography to retire coal plants and reduce gas reliance.Incentivising local Investment: They encouraged community-owned energy projects and massive local manufacturing of clean tech. What are the innovative Solutions and a forward outlook for UAE The UAE is not sitting pretty on its hurdles and challenges. The nation is in its own way attempting to tackle these challenges with innovative solutions and a pragmatic approach to energy development Some of them are as depicted below:. Policy and Regulatory Action: The government has established a clear regulatory framework, including Federal Decree-Law No. (11) of 2024 on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects and the National Register for Carbon Credits. These legislative actions provide a clear path for businesses to incorporate climate risk assessments and emissions reporting, fostering a supportive ecosystem for green investment. Technological Innovation and R&D: The UAE has emerged as a hub for climate tech investment, attracting over $400 million in funding between 2018 and 2022. Research and development centers, such as the one at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, are actively focusing on smart grid integration, advanced energy storage, and green hydrogen production to overcome intermittency issues. AI is also being leveraged for optimizing energy use. Technologies such as predictive maintenance is being effectively used in power plants. Strategic Partnerships: Collaborations like the Partnership for Accelerating Clean Energy (PACE) with the US aims to mobilize $100 billion in financing for 100 GW of clean energy projects globally by 2035, showcasing the UAE's commitment to international cooperation and leadership in climate diplomacy. The UAE's journey to net zero by 2050 is an evidence to its national commitment and strategic foresight. By leveraging its financial strength by investing in pioneering projects and innovative technologies, the Emirates is charting a distinctive path that harmonises economic imperatives with the urgent need for climate action. It is also aiming to secure a sustainable future for generations to come. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
A circular economy is not a "waste-to-wealth" magic trick—it is a demand for systemic discipline. By merging policy intent with informal-sector integration, India and the UAE are proving that the future of urban competitiveness is built on what we refuse to throw away. At 5:07 a.m., Mumbai is not yet fully awake, but Dharavi is already at work. Priya ties her hair, folds a sari pallu over her head, and steps into a lane that smells like yesterday’s dinner, today’s hurry, and the quiet panic of “where will this go?”. She carries two sacks because she has learned—through hands, not through policy—that if everything is mixed, nothing is valuable. Even before the first school bell rings, she is touching the material truth of the city: plastic that can be sold, paper that can be rescued, metal that still has worth, and the rest that will rot, burn, or travel to a mountain of decay. Priya does not speak in the language of conferences. She does not say “material recovery facility” or “post-consumer packaging” or “behavioural nudges”. She speaks in weight and smell and price. She knows which plastic fetches money and which plastic becomes a curse. She knows that a little food stuck inside a bottle can ruin a batch, and that one careless household can contaminate what ten careful households tried to segregate. She knows the truth that India often avoids saying aloud: the country’s recycling, for decades, has been carried by informal workers who were treated as if they were untouchable shadows rather than essential service providers. A few kilometres away, Arjun watches a line of garbage trucks move like a slow procession. He works with the city, and the work has a way of changing a person. At first, he believed waste was a technical problem: collection, transport, processing, disposal. Then he started noticing the human geography of it. He began to see who lived closest to dump yards, who breathed the worst air, who worked without gloves, and who could afford to pretend the problem ended at the bin. In Delhi, the skyline has its own unwanted monument—Ghazipur. When people say landfill, they imagine a contained place. Ghazipur is a mountain that should not exist, made of decades of what the city refused to look at. When methane pockets shift and refuse smoulders, it is not a “local nuisance”. It becomes a public-health event, a climate event, a dignity event. Waste, in India, has a way of refusing to stay in its lane. The smell that follows people home In the public imagination, waste management is still too often treated like a cleanliness campaign—something cosmetic, something to show visitors. But waste does not behave like a poster. It behaves like a force. When plastics choke drains, a brief shower becomes knee-deep flooding. Streets turn into stagnant pools and traffic becomes an emergency; ambulances slow down; children splash through grey water; shopkeepers lift goods onto stools and pray the water stops rising. When mixed garbage sits at a street corner, it does not remain “a pile”. It becomes a breeding ground for flies and disease, a feast for animals, an invitation for open burning. When a landfill burns, its smoke does not politely stop at the boundary of poverty. It drifts into apartments and schools, into lungs that had no say in the matter. Waste is also a time thief. It steals hours from women who manage household sanitation, from sanitation workers who spend a day around rot and sharp edges, from citizens who lose working days to illness that began with contaminated surroundings. It is not merely a matter of aesthetics. It is the everyday infrastructure of health, and when that infrastructure fails, public life weakens. And yet, India’s most important waste lesson is also its most hopeful one: the same system that makes waste a disaster can make waste a resource—if it is redesigned. Circular economy: a hard idea with a simple moral The phrase “circular economy” is fashionable now, but the core idea is not complicated. It says: stop designing products and cities as if “away” exists. Reduce what is unnecessary. Reuse what still works. Recycle what can be recycled safely and economically. Recover value from what remains. Regenerate what has been depleted. A circular economy is not an invitation to romanticise “waste-to-wealth” as a magic trick. It is a demand for discipline: at source, in collection, in separation, in markets, in law, and in the ethics of who bears the burden of our convenience. It challenges a society to ask a harder question than “how do we dispose?” It asks, “why did we create this waste in the first place, and who is paying for it with their lungs, their rivers, and their labour?” For Priya, circular economy is not a seminar. It is a future in which her work becomes safer, steadier, and respected—because the city finally admits that the people who keep materials circulating deserve rights, not pity. India’s policy engine: big intent, uneven execution India has, without question, moved waste management from the margins to the centre of governance language. The Government of India’s initiatives in this sector have created momentum that did not exist a decade ago, and in many cities, that momentum has translated into real improvement. But the story is not a simple success narrative; it is a story of strong frameworks meeting uneven capacities. Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban 2.0 signalled that Indian cities are expected to move towards “garbage-free” outcomes, with emphasis on source segregation, scientific processing, and the remediation of legacy dumpsites. The mission’s scale and funding architecture matter because waste management is capital-intensive: vehicles, transfer stations, sorting infrastructure, composting and biomethanation units, material recovery facilities, and the unglamorous systems of monitoring and enforcement that keep operations from collapsing into chaos. India’s Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 placed source segregation and scientific management at the heart of municipal responsibility. In the years that followed, the country’s regulatory posture sharpened further in areas that had long been treated as “too hard”, particularly plastics and e-waste. Extended Producer Responsibility frameworks—strengthened through amendments and rules in 2022—attempted to move part of the financial and operational burden from municipalities to producers, especially for plastic packaging and electronics. That shift is structurally important. It signals a policy understanding that a city cannot be forced to clean up an economy’s design failures forever. There is also an organic-waste story that is sometimes underappreciated. Through programmes such as GOBARdhan, the policy intent is to turn wet waste and animal waste into value streams—biogas, compressed biogas, compost—so that the most abundant portion of municipal waste does not become methane in landfills. In parallel, India’s role in regional and multilateral conversations, including hosting the Regional 3R and Circular Economy Forum and the Jaipur Declaration, indicates that circularity is being framed not merely as sanitation, but as resource efficiency and economic resilience. This is the strength of India’s approach: it has built a policy canopy wide enough to cover cities, industries, and citizens. It has signalled that waste is not a low-status municipal chore; it is economic governance. The weakness is not the absence of policy. The weakness is the daily struggle to convert policy into habit and infrastructure into performance. Source segregation remains inconsistent across many cities, and when waste is mixed, it contaminates everything downstream. Composting plants receive plastics; recycling units receive organic sludge; processing economics collapse; and landfills remain the ultimate destination. Urban Local Bodies often operate under capacity constraints—staffing, budgets, enforcement powers, procurement quality, contract management—and waste management is precisely the kind of system that fails when daily discipline is missing. Even where rules exist, enforcement is often sporadic and politically sensitive, particularly when it requires confronting citizens and businesses who have grown used to dumping costs onto the public. Perhaps the most ethically urgent weakness is the inconsistent integration of the informal sector. India’s recycling reality has historically been driven by waste pickers and small aggregators, but formalisation, when done poorly, can displace them rather than protect them. The circular economy cannot become a corporate compliance theatre in which paperwork improves while livelihoods collapse. The transition must be designed to include informal workers as rights-bearing partners, not as disposable intermediaries. Indore’s discipline: what “clean” looks like when it becomes routine Indore’s story is often invoked because it demonstrates a simple truth: systems change when daily compliance becomes normal. In Indore, the shift has been credited to door-to-door collection, citizen engagement mechanisms, complaint systems such as “311”, and an administrative culture that insisted on segregation and feedback loops. The point is not that Indore is perfect. The point is that the city treated waste management as a continuous operational system rather than a campaign. Indore’s deeper lesson is social. Waste is managed not only by trucks and plants but by collective behaviour. When a city builds a culture in which households separate waste, institutions follow protocols, and penalties and incentives are consistent, the system becomes less fragile. When a city relies on occasional cleanliness drives and enforcement spikes, it becomes a theatre—and waste, like water, always finds the cracks. India’s circular pioneers: where innovation meets daily reality The phrase “waste-to-wealth” can easily become a slogan used to avoid uncomfortable questions about reduction and responsibility. But India does have an emerging ecosystem of enterprises and models that are turning circular economy from an idea into supply chains. In Kanpur, Phool is often cited as an example of how an urban cultural habit—temple offerings—can be redirected from rivers and drains into products such as incense and other compostable or bio-based outputs. It is a story that connects faith, waste, livelihood, and pollution in a single loop. It is also a reminder that circular economy is not only about plastics and machinery; it is also about designing systems around human behaviour. In the energy and mobility transition, companies such as Lohum represent another crucial frontier: batteries. As India accelerates electric mobility, the end-of-life story of batteries becomes central to resource security and environmental safety. Recycling and repurposing batteries is not merely an environmental service; it is an industrial necessity in a world where critical minerals are geopolitically sensitive. In plastics, the efforts of organisations such as Banyan Nation and Lucro underscore how difficult “recycling” becomes when quality standards, contamination, and market acceptance are not addressed. Turning post-consumer plastics back into usable raw material is the hard work of circularity—less glamorous than awareness campaigns, more impactful than occasional clean-ups. In organic waste management, organisations such as GPS Renewables highlight the logic that the most abundant waste stream—wet waste—should not be transported long distances to become landfill methane. Converting organic waste into biogas and energy is a step toward treating cities as resource ecosystems rather than consumption sinks. Then there are decentralised models such as Saahas Zero Waste’s work in places like Marsur, Karnataka, which illustrates that circularity often performs better when systems are local, community-aligned, and designed to reduce transport and leakage. Decentralisation is not always easy, but it can be more resilient: fewer kilometres travelled by waste, fewer chances for mixing, and more visible accountability. The significance of these Indian cases is not that they are “feel-good stories”. Their significance is that they answer the sceptic’s question: can circularity work in India’s conditions? They show that it can—when the system is designed around segregation, logistics, market linkage, and community participation. Civil society: the bridge between policy and behaviour In the Indian waste ecosystem, civil society is often the difference between policy that exists on paper and practice that exists in lanes. Models such as SWaCH in Pune are frequently referenced because they attempt to integrate waste pickers into structured service delivery, acknowledging that the people who recover value from waste deserve recognition, identity, and stable work structures. Organisations such as Hasiru Dala in Bengaluru have worked on inclusion, livelihoods, and formal recognition for waste pickers, pushing against the tendency to treat informal workers as a temporary embarrassment rather than a permanent asset. In Delhi, groups such as Chintan have long engaged with waste picker rights, informal recycling systems, and public advocacy for safer and more equitable waste management. These organisations do more than collect waste. They build trust, organise labour, and create the social legitimacy without which segregation collapses. They show that the circular economy is not only about materials; it is about people. A truly circular city cannot run on invisible labour. What other nations did that India can adapt without pretending to be them International examples matter not because India must imitate them, but because they clarify what “works” looks like when translated into incentives and systems. Deposit-return systems in countries such as Denmark and Germany illustrate a powerful behavioural truth: people return bottles when it is easy, when there are return points everywhere, and when the deposit value makes throwing away feel irrational. The brilliance is not cultural; it is systemic. The design makes the responsible action the convenient action. Japan’s reputation for disciplined sorting, and the example of places such as Kamikatsu, show how far community norms can go when a society decides that waste is not someone else’s problem. Sweden’s approach to waste-to-energy, often cited for its ability to reduce landfilling, reveals both potential and risk: energy recovery can reduce landfill dependence, but it must not become an excuse to continue producing wasteful products. Other cited examples, such as smart bins and sensors used in cities like Prague to optimise collection and reduce overflow, highlight an operational dimension: when cities measure waste, they manage it better. When they do not measure, waste becomes a fog. The transferable lesson from all these examples is not a technology. It is governance design: predictable rules, infrastructure that supports compliance, market mechanisms that reward correct behaviour, and enforcement that is consistent enough to shape habit. The UAE: circular economy as national competitiveness and city branding If India’s waste story is shaped by scale, informality, and uneven capacity, the UAE’s story is shaped by rapid infrastructure delivery, policy coherence, and a strong linkage between environmental performance and global-city reputation. The UAE Circular Economy Policy 2021–2031, led by the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, frames circularity across priority sectors such as sustainable infrastructure, transport, manufacturing, and food. This matters because it places circular economy within national economic planning rather than leaving it as a municipal sanitation function. It signals that resource efficiency and waste reduction are part of how the UAE imagines future competitiveness. The UAE has also articulated national waste diversion ambitions, including high diversion targets for municipal waste away from landfills. In practical terms, one of the most visible components of UAE strategy has been investment in waste-to-energy infrastructure, supported by public-private partnerships and high-capex execution. Sharjah’s waste-to-energy project—linked to BEEAH and Masdar—has been highlighted as a regional landmark, with a narrative that combines landfill diversion, energy generation, and recovery of metals from residual streams. Dubai’s Warsan waste-to-energy plant is another flagship project, described as operating at very large scale, processing thousands of tonnes of waste per day, generating significant electricity, and integrating metal recovery and ash handling into broader industrial loops. Alongside these infrastructure plays, Dubai Municipality’s Circle Dubai initiative has been positioned as a community-driven push aligned with the Dubai Integrated Waste Management Strategy 2041, reflecting an understanding that infrastructure alone cannot deliver circularity unless citizen behaviour and segregation improve. The strengths of the UAE approach are clear. Policy direction tends to translate into projects rapidly. Infrastructure is delivered at speed. Partnerships mobilise capital. The public narrative ties waste management to liveability and global competitiveness. The risks are also clear, and they are not unique to the UAE. Waste-to-energy, while useful for residual waste, can become a convenience trap if reduction, reuse, and recycling do not grow with equal seriousness. If an economy becomes dependent on feeding incinerators, it can lose appetite for upstream redesign. A mature circular economy must eventually move beyond processing waste to preventing it. Masdar City: a brief case-study in “designing sustainability into a place” Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is often presented as an urban laboratory where sustainability is designed into systems rather than bolted on later. Its sustainability reporting has highlighted ongoing efforts to improve waste diversion through composting and recycling, positioned as part of a broader approach that includes energy efficiency and low-carbon urban planning. Masdar City’s most important relevance to the waste conversation is conceptual: a circular city is not built by a single waste plant. It is built by design choices that reinforce each other—materials selection, procurement standards, reuse culture, convenient segregation infrastructure, and operational accountability. When circularity is designed into the city’s DNA, waste management becomes a predictable function rather than an emergency response. For India, the Masdar City lesson is not “build a new city”. It is “treat circularity as design, not as cleanup”. The oldest circular economy: indigenous and tribal lessons we ignore at our own cost Long before circular economy became fashionable, many tribal and indigenous communities lived circularity as a survival ethic. The Maria tribe in Bastar, Chhattisgarh is cited as one example in the broader reflection that such communities used biodegradable materials, repaired and reused, and treated “waste” as something that should safely return to nature. Across India’s diverse indigenous cultures—and in indigenous cultures elsewhere—there is a recurring logic that modern consumption often forgets. Materials are not cheap because they are “available”; they are precious because they are borrowed from ecosystems. When communities treat the environment as kin rather than a warehouse, waste becomes morally unacceptable, not merely inconvenient. This is not about romanticising poverty or pretending traditional life was perfect. It is about recognising that indigenous circularity offers design principles that modern economies can translate: use local and biodegradable materials where possible, build repair culture, share resources, reduce unnecessary packaging, and treat disposal as a last resort. The circular economy, at its best, is modern science meeting ancient restraint. What must happen next, if this story is to end differently The next phase of India’s waste transition must move beyond grand announcements and convert into daily reliability. That transformation will not come from one miracle technology. It will come from a series of interconnected shifts that keep the system from leaking. Source segregation has to become non-negotiable, not only encouraged. Without it, the economics and safety of almost every downstream solution collapses. Wet waste must be treated as a resource stream through local composting and biogas pathways, because transporting rotting waste long distances is both inefficient and hazardous. Material recovery facilities must be built and operated like core public infrastructure, with skilled staffing and transparent monitoring. Extended Producer Responsibility must be enforced as real accountability, not as paperwork, because producers must share the cost of the waste their products generate. Informal workers must be integrated as formal partners with protection, recognition, and stable livelihoods, because a circular economy without dignity is exploitation dressed up as sustainability. Waste-to-energy should be used wisely, as a solution for residual waste that cannot be recycled or composted, not as a shortcut that undermines reduction and reuse. Public procurement should be used strategically, because when government buys circular products and insists on recycled content and repairable designs, markets shift. Measurement and transparent dashboards should become routine, because what is not measured is not managed, and citizens will not trust what they cannot see. Education must treat circularity as a life skill, so that children learn repair, reuse, and segregation as normal behaviour rather than moral preaching. Above all, the cultural idea of “modernity” must be redefined. Modernity cannot mean a life designed around disposability. A truly modern society is one that can enjoy comfort without exporting its costs to landfills, rivers, and invisible workers. The last image: a lane that smells different Imagine Priya again, in the same lane, months from now. The bin is not overflowing because collection is predictable. Two streams remain separate because households learned that segregation is not charity; it is civic discipline. Wet waste is processed locally, turning into biogas or compost instead of methane and stench. Dry waste is channelled into recovery pathways that treat materials as assets. Priya’s work becomes safer, more dignified, less dependent on luck and exploitation. Her child coughs less. The drain does not choke during the first heavy rain. The lane begins to smell like a place people can live in, not merely survive in. This is the real promise of waste management and circular economy. It is not a slogan. It is a redesign of public life. Waste is what a society produces when it refuses to take responsibility for its own habits. Circularity is what a society builds when it finally decides to grow up. And if India and the UAE—two places with very different contexts—are pointing to a shared lesson, it is this: infrastructure matters, policy matters, innovation matters, and culture matters. But the decisive shift is moral. It is the moment a city stops saying, “throw it away,” and begins asking, “where does it go, who pays for it, and how do we keep it in use?” When waste starts talking, the question is whether we will finally listen—and redesign the story before the ending is written in smoke. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
At dawn, the Sundarbans does not wake up; it merely changes state. The darkness that shrouds the delta for twelve hours retreats, not with a burst of light, but with a slow, grey withdrawal, revealing a world that is neither fully land nor fully water. The tide slips away from the creeks with a deceptive calm, exposing vast stretches of glistening mudflats that were liquid only hours ago. Mangrove roots, twisted and ancient, rise from the sludge like knotted fingers, breathing in the heavy, saline air. It is in this transient hour—when the boundary between the village and the wild is most porous—that the wooden boats rock gently in the narrow channels, and men step down into knee-deep mud to begin their day. This is the most dangerous hour of the day. It is not that the men are unaware of the risks; they know this forest with an intimacy that borders on the spiritual. They know which bends in the creek narrow without warning, transforming a navigable passage into a trap. They know where the dense Phoenix paludosa scrub—the Hental bushes—grows thick enough to conceal a four-hundred-pound predator mere feet away. They know the smell of a tiger long before they ever see it, a pungent, musky warning carried on the wind. They know when the birds stop calling, signaling a presence that demands absolute silence. Yet, despite this visceral knowledge, they step into the mud. They do so because in the Sundarbans, hunger has its own undeniable logic, and often, hunger outruns fear. For generations, the people of this archipelago—a sprawling network of 102 islands woven together by a labyrinth of tidal waterways—have lived on the razor's edge of the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem. They have ventured into the dense thickets to collect honey, wax, firewood, fish, and crabs, their local economy intrinsically tied to the bio-resources of the delta. But this dependence forces them into the domain of an apex predator that has adapted remarkably to this semi-aquatic world. The Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sundarbans is not the animal of textbooks or savannah documentaries. It is a creature of the tides, an amphibious phantom that swims kilometres without rest, hunts silently from the water, and ambushes not from behind trees, but from reeds, banks, and shadows. The narrative of this landscape, particularly in the years stretching from 2018 to early 2026, has darkened significantly. What was once a story of occasional, tragic accidents has evolved into a complex saga of climate change-induced habitat loss, rising sea levels squeezing apex predators and humans into shrinking islands, and a socio-economic desperation that drives fishermen into what locals call the "jaws of the tide". The Winter of Loss The fragile nature of this coexistence was shattered in the latter half of 2025, a period that proved particularly deadly for the forest-dependent communities of the Indian Sundarbans. In late November, a series of ambushes sent shockwaves through the fishing villages, challenging the official narratives that conflict was under control. On November 23, 2025, the precarious truce between man and nature broke down completely. A young fisherman, whose identity would soon become a symbol of the collective vulnerability of the crab-collecting community, was ambushed by a tiger deep within the mangroves. The attack followed a harrowing, familiar pattern. It occurred in the early morning, that lethal twilight window. The victim was focused on his gear, anchoring his small boat near a narrow creek to set crab traps, unaware of the tiger lurking in the dense scrub lining the banks. In the Sundarbans, the tiger does not roar before it strikes; it is a force of silence. The predator often swims noiselessly toward the boat or leaps from the high banks, dragging the victim into the forest before companions can even draw a breath. His body was recovered the following morning, a grim task undertaken by a joint team of forest officials and courageous villagers who worked through the night. Tragedy, however, rarely arrives alone in the delta. In that very same week, Sambhu Sardar, a 32-year-old resident, lost his life under strikingly similar circumstances. Sardar was collecting crabs with companions when he was snatched from his boat, the sheer stealth and power of the attack leaving no room for escape. The violence continued bleeding into early December, when Tapas Haldar, aged 45, was killed near the Sindurkathi forest area. Haldar was working in shallow waters—a necessity for certain types of crab and fish collection—when the forest claimed him. These sequential attacks paralyzed the workforce. In villages like Kishorimohanpur, Kultali, Gosaba, and Patharpratima, the fear was palpable. Routine signs of tiger presence, such as fresh pugmarks found near human habitations, were enough to impose a self-declared curfew, emptying entire neighborhoods and keeping children from school. The water, usually a source of life, had become a source of dread. Yet, as one local put it with chilling pragmatism, "We have to feed our stomachs before we can fear the tiger". The Paradox of Conservation To understand why these tragedies are recurring with such grim regularity, one must look beyond the immediate horror of the attacks and examine the ecological engine driving them. The Sundarbans is currently caught in a "paradox of conservation". Global and national conservation efforts have been undeniably successful in stabilizing and even increasing tiger populations. Data indicates that tiger numbers in the Indian sector have risen from 106 in 2014 to approximately 101 by the 2022 census, with the Bangladesh sector reaching 125 by 2024. While this biological recovery is a triumph for biodiversity, it has created a spatial crisis. Tigers are fiercely territorial animals, requiring vast swathes of land to roam and hunt. As their numbers swell, the competition for space intensifies. Dominant males monopolize the prime habitats deep within the forest, forcing sub-adult tigers, the elderly, or weaker individuals to the periphery. In a mainland forest, these marginalized tigers might disperse into a buffer zone. But in the Sundarbans, the "buffer" is a fiction; the land mass is constantly eroding due to rising sea levels, meaning the "real estate" available for tigers is shrinking even as their population grows. This compression effect creates a "pressure cooker" scenario. The tigers are physically pushed closer to the fringes, to the very edges of human settlements like Kultali and Gosaba. They are not invading human territory out of malice; they are refugees of their own success, squeezed by the dual forces of population growth and habitat loss. Compounding this spatial crisis is a critical ecological failure: the decline of the natural prey base. Reports from both sides of the border indicate a worrying reduction in the abundance of spotted deer (Axis axis) and wild boar (Sus scrofa), the tiger's primary food sources. This scarcity is multifaceted, driven by poaching, salinity stress that degrades the grasslands deer rely on, and the devastation of cyclones. When the density of natural prey falls below a critical threshold, tigers are forced to expand their home ranges. A hungry tiger is a risk-taking tiger. In the absence of deer, the predator may view livestock, or tragically, humans crouching in boats, as alternative prey. The tiger explores new islands, follows scent trails, and edges closer to human activity—not because it prefers human flesh, but because the forest is failing to feed it. The Climate Multiplier Looming over this biological drama is the spectre of climate change, acting as a potent conflict multiplier. The Sundarbans is experiencing sea-level rise at a rate nearly double the global average, a hydrological aggression that is physically consuming the mangrove islands. Four islands have been completely submerged in the last two decades, and as the forest recedes, the buffer between the wild and the settled vanishes. The impact is not just physical but chemical. The intrusion of high-salinity water, exacerbated by a relentless parade of cyclones—Amphan in 2020, Yaas in 2021, and Remal in 2024—degrades the quality of the mangrove forest. Salinity affects the distribution of prey species, which prefer freshwater sources. Consequently, tigers must roam further to find freshwater ponds, a search that often brings them perilously close to village ponds and paddy fields. The cyclones also destroy the fragile infrastructure meant to keep the two species apart. Cyclone Amphan, for instance, damaged over 80% of the nylon net fencing that separates the forest from the villages. These fences, often the only line of defense, are rendered useless by the fury of the storms, leaving villages vulnerable to tiger entry for months until repairs can be completed. In this dissolving world, the conflict is elemental; it is a fight for the same shrinking space, the same resources, and the right to survive. The Economics of "Illegality" The human side of this equation is defined by an absolute lack of alternatives. For the four and a half million people living on the Indian side, the forest is not merely a backdrop but a demanding provider. Agriculture, once a staple, is increasingly unviable due to the salinity creeping into the soil. A single failed season, a single inundation of saltwater, can push an entire household toward the forest. However, the state’s management of this resource has created a legal trap for the poorest. The "Boat License Certificate" (BLC) system, which regulates fishing, is woefully inadequate. There are only roughly 924 active BLCs for a population of over 140,000 fishers. This bureaucratic bottleneck forces the vast majority of fishers to enter the forest "illegally." They venture into the core areas—where fish and crab yields are higher—without permits, not out of defiance, but out of necessity. This illegality has lethal consequences. When a "legal" fisher is killed, there is a recognized pathway to compensation. But when an "illegal" fisher is taken by a tiger, the death often goes unreported to avoid prosecution. The family is left in destitute silence, denied the compensation that could prevent their total economic collapse. The desperation is such that despite knowing the risks—despite the recent deaths of Sambhu Sardar and Tapas Haldar—neighbors continue to launch their boats the very next dawn. They are trapped in a system where they must risk death in the forest to avoid the certainty of hunger at home. The Sociology of the "Tiger Widow" Behind the statistics of conflict lies a profound and gendered tragedy, one that remains largely invisible to the outside world. The phenomenon of the "Tiger Widow" (Bagh-Bidhoba) represents a unique intersection of ecological disaster, patriarchal oppression, and administrative apathy. In the intricate cosmology of the Sundarbans, the tiger is often seen not just as an animal but as the enforcer of the forest deity Bonbibi or the wrath of the demon Dakshin Rai. When a man is killed by a tiger, the blame is frequently, and cruelly, shifted to his wife. A prevailing superstition holds that the husband died because his wife was "impure" or failed to perform her rituals correctly. Consequently, these women face "social death" long before their physical demise. They are branded with derogatory terms like swami kheko ("husband eater") or apoya (cursed). This stigma manifests in tangible exclusion: they are barred from religious functions, auspicious ceremonies like weddings, and sometimes even from communal village life. In extreme cases, they are relegated to "widow hamlets" (Bidhoba Palli), isolated ghettos of grief where they live in ostracized poverty. For decades, the Forest Department utilized the bureaucratic loophole of "illegal entry" to deny compensation to these widows. If a victim died in the "core area" or without a BLC, the death was classified as the result of an illegal act, absolving the state of liability. This policy left thousands of families without the Rs. 500,000 ex-gratia payment that could have provided a lifeline. However, the legal landscape shifted dramatically with the case of Shantibala Naskar vs. The State of West Bengal in 2023. Shantibala, whose husband was killed in a restricted zone, fought a legal battle that resulted in a landmark judgment by the Calcutta High Court. The court ruled that the "transgression of law"—entering the core area—cannot be a ground to deny compensation for the loss of life caused by a wild animal. The judgment established that the state has a duty to protect its citizens and compensate for wildlife conflict regardless of zone boundaries. Despite this victory, implementation remains sluggish. As of 2025, reports indicate that while the policy has changed to remove the core/buffer distinction, bureaucratic hurdles persist. Widows still struggle to obtain the necessary post-mortem reports and police certificates, often facing hostility from local officials who view them as complicit in illegal forest entry. The psychological toll is immense. Recent research utilizing the "Eco-Psychiatry" framework reveals that 72% of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) cases in these villages are directly linked to tiger attacks. Yet, resilience persists. Driven by the need to feed their children, many widows defy the stigma and return to the creeks to fish, or organize into self-help groups supported by NGOs. The Modern Mitigation Arsenal In the face of this escalating crisis, the response has evolved from passive fencing to proactive, high-tech surveillance. The period of 2025–2026 marks a turning point in the integration of technology into conservation management in the Sundarbans. In February 2025, a groundbreaking pilot project was launched in the Indian Sundarbans involving the deployment of AI-powered cameras. Unlike traditional camera traps that store images on SD cards retrieved weeks later, these "smart cameras" process data in real-time. Positioned along the nylon net fences and vulnerable creek crossings, they use edge computing to identify tigers and instantly transmit alerts to forest range officers. This allows for an immediate response. If a tiger is detected moving toward a village, the Forest Department can dispatch Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) to drive the animal back before it breaches the perimeter. This shifts the strategy from reaction—responding to a mauled body—to prevention—intercepting the tiger before it strikes. Complementing the cameras are thermal-imaging drones, which are critical for night operations. In incidents like the straying case in Deulbari in mid-June 2025, drones allowed teams to track the heat signature of the tiger through dense cover, ensuring safe capture without risking human lives in a blind search. Alongside the high-tech wizardry, the "Kultali Model" of coexistence has emerged as a template for community engagement. Proposed as a national model by the NTCA in 2025, it integrates technology with deep human networks. The model relies on village volunteers known as Bagh Bondhus (Friends of the Tiger), who act as the eyes and ears of the forest department. Trained to secure the perimeter when a tiger strays, they prevent the mob violence that historically resulted in the killing of tigers. This was evident in early 2025, when a tiger strayed into Kishorimohanpur. Instead of retaliatory killing, the villagers alerted forest staff, leading to a successful capture and release—a success story cited as evidence of changing attitudes. Even low-tech innovations have found a place in this arsenal. The practice of wearing tiger deterrent masks on the back of the head—predicated on the theory that tigers prefer to ambush from behind and will avoid prey that appears to be "watching" them—remains in use. Interestingly, this technique, born in the Sundarbans, has been exported to other conflict zones in India, such as Karnataka and Kerala, demonstrating the region's role as a pioneer in conflict adaptation. Livelihoods as Conservation Ultimately, however, no amount of technology can solve the conflict if the human dependence on the forest remains absolute. To stop the killings, one must stop the entry. Reducing this dependence is the holy grail of conflict mitigation. Among the various alternative livelihood schemes, mud crab farming (Scylla olivacea) has shown significant promise. A 2025 economic report highlights its viability, noting a Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR) of 3.48, significantly higher than traditional agriculture in the saline belt. The logic is simple and effective: unlike open forest collection, farm-based rearing allows widows and fishers to earn a living without entering the tiger's domain. The "fattening" of crabs in cages or ponds within the village provides a steady income, with collectors earning an average monthly profit of Rs. 3,000–4,000. While still male-dominated, the sector is increasingly accessible to women, offering a lifeline to tiger widows who can manage small ponds near their homes. However, the history of the Sundarbans is littered with the failures of "top-down" approaches. Large-scale Social Forestry Programs and centralized apiary initiatives have often failed due to a lack of community ownership. Research indicates that interventions that ignore local power dynamics often result in elite capture—where the benefits are siphoned off by village leaders, leaving the poorest, who are most likely to enter the forest, with nothing. Without transformative institutional change that empowers the marginalized, these programs become "paper successes" that do not effectively reduce the human footprint in the forest. A Borderless Crisis The challenge of the Sundarbans is further complicated by the fact that the ecosystem ignores political borders. Tigers swim across the fluid frontier between India and Bangladesh freely, and effective management requires synchronicity between the two nations. In February 2025, a significant cross-border dialogue was convened in Kolkata, bringing together conservationists and policymakers to address this shared crisis. The meeting underscored the need for a unified "landscape approach," with strategies including the standardization of response protocols for straying tigers and the exchange of data on tiger movements. On the Bangladesh side, the launch of the Conservation and Restoration Initiatives in the Sundarbans Region (CRIS) project in late 2025 marks a major step. Funded by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), this project aims to restore the ecological health of the Sundarbans Impact Zone, directly benefiting the tiger habitat and potentially reducing the pressure that drives them toward villages. Some experts, like Anamitra Anurag Danda, propose even more radical long-term solutions, such as "managed retreat." This "Vision 2050" argues for the strategic relocation of populations from the most vulnerable, sinking islands to safer zones. While politically controversial due to the deep attachment locals have to their land, economic analyses suggest that the net benefits of such a retreat—in terms of safety and ecosystem services—far outweigh the "business-as-usual" costs of constant disaster relief and conflict. Conclusion: A Fragile Equilibrium As the calendar turns through 2026, the Sundarbans remains a landscape on a knife-edge. The conflict here is not merely a wildlife management issue; it is a climate justice issue, where those who contributed least to global emissions pay with their lives. The narrative is evolving, shifting from fatalism to active management—from the "husband eater" stigma to the empowered entrepreneur, from the helpless victim to the volunteer armed with a thermal drone. The deployment of AI and the legal victories in compensation cases offer glimmers of hope. However, the fundamental drivers—climate change and poverty—remain formidable. As long as the deer population is scarce and the rivers turn salty, the tiger will wander. And as long as the nets are empty and the land is barren, the fisherman will enter the creek. The "fragile harmony" of this UNESCO World Heritage site depends not just on saving the tiger, but on saving the people who live in its shadow. The forest demands humility; it cannot be controlled, only negotiated with. Here, humans are not masters, and tigers are not villains. Both are survivors, navigating a dissolving world, sharing a shrinking space, and testing the limits of coexistence one tide at a time. The question that hangs over the mangroves is not whether the conflict will end, but whether humanity can construct a model that respects the boundaries of the wild while ensuring the dignity of the human. Until then, the dawn will continue to bring both the promise of a catch and the silence of the ambush, in the jaws of the tide. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
Prologue: When the Mountains Stop Keeping Their Distance In the middle Himalayas, the night does not simply fall; it rises from the deep valleys, swallowing the chir pine ridges in a bruised purple twilight. In the village of Gajald, nestled in the Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand, this specific hour—traditionally known as godhuli bela or "the time of cow dust"—was once the heartbeat of social life. It was a time of return: cattle herded home with distinct whistles, children shouting across harvested terrace fields, and neighbors exchanging news over stone walls. Today, Gajald is silent. As the sun dips behind the Trishul peak, the village undergoes a transformation that resembles a wartime curfew more than a rural dusk. The heavy wooden doors of traditional koti houses are bolted shut. Livestock are pushed into reinforced concrete sheds, their anxiety mirroring that of their owners. The courtyard, once the theatre of Pahadi life, is abandoned to the creeping shadows. Inside, conversations are hushed. Ears are tuned to the slightest sound outside—the snap of a dry twig, the sharp alarm call of a barking deer (Kakar), or the guttural sawing sound of a leopard on the prowl. This silence is not unique to Gajald. It echoes across the entire Indian Himalayan Region, a 2,500-kilometer arc of active geology that stretches from the snow-dusted deserts of Ladakh to the humid rainforests of Arunachal Pradesh. Over the last eight years, specifically between 2018 and 2026, this landscape has become the theatre of an escalating, complex, and structural war. It is not a war of ideology, but of biology and survival. The mountains, which for centuries maintained a respectful distance from human settlement, are no longer keeping that distance. The buffer is gone. What is unfolding is not a series of freak accidents, but a structural reckoning. From the "ghost villages" of Uttarakhand to the apple belts of Himachal, and from the warming winters of Kashmir to the severed elephant corridors of Assam, the conflict between man and animal has shifted from the margins of the wilderness to the absolute center of everyday life. The Geography of Fear: Living Under the Leopard’s Shadow In Uttarakhand, the leopard has become the defining symbol of this new fear—not because it is new to the landscape, but because it has become intimately familiar with human space. The conflict here is not confined to the edges of protected areas like Corbett or Rajaji; it has metastasized into revenue villages and district headquarters. The crisis in Pauri Garhwal offers a grim case study. Here, the phenomenon of palayan (outmigration) has unintentionally reshaped predator behavior. As unemployment drives people to the plains, the "Ghost Village" phenomenon accelerates. Fields that were once manicured terraces revert to wild scrub and Lantana bushes. This ecological succession invites wild boar and barking deer closer to the abandoned homes. Prey moves in. Predators follow. The few residents who remain—often the elderly, women, and children—find themselves living on isolated islands in a recovering forest that is teeming with teeth. In late 2025, Gajald became a grim emblem of this siege when a single leopard held the community hostage for weeks. The attacks did not occur deep in the jungle but in the domestic sphere—near water taps and on school paths. The fear was so palpable that the district administration declared a "lockdown," shutting 55 schools in the Bada, Chardhar, and Dhandhari circles. Children attended class online not because of a pandemic or snow, but because the walk to school had become lethal. When the leopard was finally put down by sharpshooter Joy Hukil after a 48-day operation, the autopsy revealed the tragedy behind the terror: the animal had worn-out claws, broken canines, and an empty stomach. This was not a healthy predator expanding its territory; it was a desperate survivor, old and infirm, pushed into the village by hunger and the inability to hunt wild prey. In villages like Dabra and Bharatpur, where populations have dropped to single digits, the feedback loop is deadly. A farmer named Sudhir Sundriyal captured the existential dread: "If I grow wheat, the wild boar eats it. If I buy a cow, the leopard kills it. If I send my child to school, I have to walk with a sickle in my hand. What is the point of living here?". The abandonment creates a "perfect cave" for predators; in Pithoragarh, a leopardess was found birthing three cubs in the hay-store of an empty house. The structure built by humans had become a maternity ward for the wild. The Bear That Didn’t Sleep: Insomnia in the Apple Belt Cross the Yamuna to the west, and the antagonist changes shape. In Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir, the conflict is dominated by the Himalayan Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus). If the leopard is a stealthy assassin, the bear is a battering ram, and its aggression is being fueled by a force invisible to the naked eye: climate change. The bear’s calendar has been rewritten. Climate data from 2023 to 2025 indicates warmer winters and delayed snowfall across the northwest Himalayas. This biological disruption prevents bears from entering full hibernation. Physiologically, a bear preparing for dormancy enters hyperphagia, a state of intense feeding frenzy. When the temperature fails to drop, the biological switch to sleep never flips. The bear remains awake, in a high-metabolic state, but the mountains are frozen and barren of natural food. A bear awake in January is a "hangry" bear—desperate, aggressive, and without patience. In the apple belts of Kullu, Chamba, and Kinnaur, this desperation meets opportunity. Orchards have expanded steadily into former forest lands, offering a seasonal calorie bonanza. A single bear raid can undo decades of labor; a mature apple tree, snapped in minutes by a foraging bear, represents twenty years of lost future income. In Kashmir, this disruption has taken a dystopian turn. Bears are now appearing in urban and peri-urban spaces like Handwara and the outskirts of Srinagar. They are filmed rummaging through dumpster bins near hotels, fighting with stray dogs. This "garbage habituation" is a one-way street to conflict. Once a bear associates the smell of humanity with the taste of food, its fear erodes. It becomes a "problem animal," and often, the only solution left for the Wildlife Department is lifelong captivity, as relocation rarely works for habituated animals. The human cost is severe. In January 2026, three villagers in Chamba were mauled while trying to chase a bear from a maize field. These incidents highlight a breakdown of the natural order: the seasons are no longer guiding the animals, leaving them to improvise in a landscape dominated by humans. Giants in a Broken Memory: The Northeast’s Corridor Crisis Move east to the humid jungles of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and the scale of the conflict becomes immense—both literally and metaphorically. Here, the protagonist is the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus), a species that requires continuity: vast spaces, predictable routes, and ancestral memory. Elephant corridors once stretched across the forests, linking India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh in a seamless genetic highway. Today, those corridors are severed by the geometry of development: tea estates, highways, railways, transmission lines, and settlements. The conflict here is industrial. The railway tracks cutting through the Deepor Beel and the corridors of Udalguri have become death traps. In late 2024, a speeding train mowed down a matriarch and a calf, an incident that sparked outrage but changed little in the operational reality. The trains continue to run, and the elephants, driven by a memory older than the tracks, continue to walk. In the West Kameng and Tawang districts of Arunachal, the Monpa and Sherdukpen communities have lived with elephants for centuries. But as infrastructure blocks traditional paths, herds are forced into villages. In 2025, the village of Mirem became a flashpoint when a herd, confused by blinding construction lights and blocked by a new wall, rampaged through the settlement. Yet, Mirem also offers a glimpse of resilience. Instead of violent retaliation, the community adopted "bio-fencing". They planted dense hedges of lemon and chili—plants that elephants detest—to guide the herds away from rice paddies. They built Tongis (tree-top watchtowers) to spot the giants early. It is a fragile truce, maintained not by concrete, but by a deep understanding of the animal's biology. The Ghost of the High Desert: The Snow Leopard’s Quiet War In the trans-Himalayan cold deserts of Ladakh and Spiti, the conflict wears a quieter, more elusive face. The Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia), the "Ghost of the Mountains," is increasingly turning to livestock as climate change alters the prey dynamics of the high altitude. In Spiti and Ladakh, the snow line is receding, allowing the Common Leopard (Panthera pardus) to move up into the Snow Leopard’s territory, while simultaneously forcing the Blue Sheep (Bharal)—the snow leopard’s primary prey—to graze on lower pastures used by domestic livestock. This "range compression" brings the predator into direct contact with the herder’s yaks and goats. The violence here is sudden and catastrophic. When a snow leopard enters a poorly protected corral, it often engages in "surplus killing," slaying dozens of animals in a panic-driven frenzy. For a pastoral family, losing 20-30 sheep in a single night is not just a loss; it is economic ruin. However, this region has also birthed one of the most successful coexistence models. The Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) worked with communities to build predator-proof corrals and launched a community-based livestock insurance scheme. Villagers pay a premium, which is matched by the project. If a snow leopard kills a yak on the open pasture, the community verifies the claim and compensates the herder immediately. The result is a profound shift in attitude. In villages like Kibber, snow leopard tourism now generates crores of rupees. The cat is worth more alive than dead. Retaliatory killings have virtually stopped. It is a powerful demonstration that economics, not just enforcement, determines the fate of the wild. The Drivers of Dissonance: Why Now? Why has this conflict escalated so sharply between 2018 and 2026? The answer lies in a "polycrisis"—a convergence of infrastructure, climate change, and waste. The Concrete Scars: The Indian government’s push for strategic connectivity, exemplified by the Char Dham Pariyojana, has fundamentally altered the landscape. Wide blacktop roads act as "fear barriers" for prey species like goral and deer, preventing them from accessing water or mating grounds. When prey populations fragment, leopards are left with empty forests and turn their gaze toward the village goats on the other side of the road. The road has not just moved people faster; it has brought predators closer. Similarly, the Rishikesh-Karnaprayag Railway, an engineering marvel running mostly through tunnels, has disrupted riparian vegetation with millions of tons of excavated "muck," destroying the prime habitat for bears. While "wildlife crossings" are part of the design, the true test will be whether animals actually use these eco-bridges or if the railway becomes another wall in the mountains. The Trash Trap: Tourism has exploded, and with it, the generation of organic waste. Towns like Manali, Joshimath, and Mussoorie often lack adequate processing, leading to garbage being dumped down hillsides. For a bear, a garbage dump is a restaurant. Studies in 2025 showed bears in the Drass sector of Ladakh consuming plastic wrappers and biomedical waste. This "anthropogenic food subsidy" baits animals into conflict, eroding their natural fear and turning them into "problem animals". The Scars You Cannot See: The Human Toll Statistics count bodies and compensation checks, but they miss the trauma. A groundbreaking 2025 report exposed a hidden epidemic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among conflict survivors in Uttarakhand. Consider the story of Liaqat Ali, a Van Gujjar pastoralist. Attacked by a tiger in 2020, he survived the physical wounds, but his mind remains trapped in the forest. Five years later, the rustle of dry leaves triggers a "freeze" response. He suffers from blinding headaches in the sun and memory lapses that destroyed his livelihood. Estranged from his family and labelled "mad," he is a casualty of a war that has no medical camps for the mind. Or consider Rakhi Rawat, attacked by a leopard at age ten while saving her brother. Now fifteen, she lives with chronic nightmares and cannot walk to school alone. While the state pays for death or injury, there is zero provision for mental health support. Survivors are left to the mercy of jhad-phook (exorcism) or silence. The conflict also wears a gendered face. Women are the primary resource gatherers—fetching water, cutting grass (ghaas), and collecting wood. They are on the front lines. When a woman is killed, the household economy unravels. In Pauri, the fear has altered gender dynamics; men working in cities blame women for "carelessness," while women, terrified, refuse to enter the forest, forcing the sale of livestock and pushing the family into poverty. The "Ghost Village" often begins with a woman who is too afraid to cut grass. The Mitigation Lab: Designing for Coexistence If total separation is impossible—and the last decade proves it is—then the solution lies in adaptation. Across the Himalayas, a "Mitigation Lab" is evolving, moving from crude barriers to sophisticated coexistence strategies. The Digital Fence: Technology is playing a pivotal role. The "Animal Intrusion Detection and Repellent System" (ANIDERS), developed by the Wildlife Trust of India, acts like a digital scarecrow. Using infrared sensors, it detects animal heat signatures and triggers lights and sounds—a tiger's roar or human shouting—to repel them. Crucially, the sounds change pattern to prevent habituation. In trials, ANIDERS reduced crop raids by 80%, offering a passive defense for ghost villages lacking manpower. The Early Warning: In Corbett Tiger Reserve, an AI-based surveillance network now watches the forest boundary. Thermal cameras feed data to an AI that identifies tigers and elephants, sending alerts to rangers and village sirens. This gives villagers a critical ten-minute head start to lock their doors. It shifts the paradigm from reacting to a kill to preventing the encounter entirely. The Green Wall: In the Northeast, "Bio-fencing" has emerged as a sustainable alternative to expensive electric fences. The simple genius of planting lemon and chili hedges leverages the elephant’s natural aversions to protect crops without violence. The Cultural Anchor: Ultimately, the most powerful mitigation is cultural. In Sikkim, the "Himal Rakshaks" (Honorary Mountain Guardians)—local villagers and yak herders—are legally empowered to patrol high altitudes. They bridge the gap between the state and the community, enforcing conservation not as an imposition from outside, but as a duty from within. Conclusion: The Negotiated Wild As we look toward 2030, one truth stands stark against the snow peaks: The Himalayas can no longer be fenced. The "Fortress Conservation" model, where animals stay in parks and humans in villages, has failed. The landscape is too fluid, the animals too adaptable, and the human footprint too pervasive. The leopard will walk through the village. The elephant will cross the railway track. The bear will seek calories where the forest fails it. The choice before us is not between people and wildlife, but between panic and planning—between retaliation and redesign. Coexistence is not a romantic ideal of harmony; it is a gritty, negotiated living. It involves acknowledging fear, loss, and risk, while refusing the illusion that one side can be erased. It requires building infrastructure with corridors in mind before the concrete is poured. It requires restoring degraded forests so animals have a reason to stay. It requires integrating mental health support into compensation, recognizing that a mauling is a wound to the soul as well as the body. As evening falls again in the hill villages, the people still listen for movement beyond the door. The mountains watch, as they always have. But the silence that falls at dusk need not be the silence of abandonment. With wisdom, planning, and a renewed compact with the wild, it can be the silence of a coexistence regained—a world where the leopard and the shepherd navigate the same narrow trails, wary, respectful, but alive. The mountains are asking for new rules of engagement. Whether we listen will determine the future of the Himalayan arc. ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
There was a time, not so long ago, when the sky was a promise kept. In the sprawling plains of Punjab, farmers knew that the first clouds of June would bring the monsoon, a rhythmic heartbeat that fed the earth. In the shimmering deserts of the Emirates, the sun was a constant, fierce companion, but one that retreated predictably as evening fell, leaving behind the cool embrace of the dunes. The world had a rhythm. Summers were hot, winters were cool, and the rains were a guest that arrived on time. That rhythm is dead. We have entered an era where the sky no longer bargains; it dictates. The years spanning 2024 to 2026 have dismantled the comfortable assumption that the future will look like the past. This concept of "stationarity"—the statistical reliance on the idea that weather patterns will remain constant—has been obliterated. Instead, we are living through a period of "global weirding," a chaotic unravelling of the seasons that has turned the weather into a violent, unpredictable force. From the melting asphalt of New Delhi to the drowned highways of Dubai, the story of our changing climate is no longer a distant warning from scientists. It is written in the sweat of a construction worker in Abu Dhabi and the despair of a farmer in Haryana. It is a story of fire and flood, of heat that kills and rain that destroys, played out across two vastly different landscapes—India and the United Arab Emirates—that find themselves united by a shared, turbulent destiny. The Furnace of the Future Imagine a heat so physical it feels like a weight on your chest. This is not the heat of a summer vacation; it is a heat that hunts you. In 2024, India witnessed a summer that defied memory. It wasn't just that the mercury climbed; it was that it refused to come down. In the arid town of Churu, Rajasthan, the thermometers groaned under the strain of 50.5 degrees Celsius. The air shimmered with a violence that scorched crops in the fields and forced birds to fall from the sky, dehydrated mid-flight. But the raw number on the thermometer tells only half the story. The true terror of this new era is the "wet-bulb" effect, a term that has moved from physics textbooks to terrifying reality. The human body is a marvel of engineering, designed to cool itself through sweat. But when extreme heat meets suffocating humidity, that mechanism fails. The sweat beads on the skin but does not evaporate, and the body becomes a trapped furnace. A wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius is considered the theoretical limit of human survival; beyond this, even a healthy person resting in the shade will overheat and die within hours. In the coastal regions of Odisha and West Bengal, this humid heat turned deadly. It wasn't just hot; it was unlivable. For the millions of outdoor workers—the backbone of India’s economy—the air became a poison. Consider the life of Usha, a domestic worker in a crowded settlement in North Delhi. For her, the "Urban Heat Island" effect is not an academic concept; it is a sleepless night in a tin-roofed home that traps the day's heat like an oven. The concrete jungle of the city absorbs the sun's rage during the day and breathes it out at night, denying the city any respite. In May 2024, Delhi recorded its warmest night in over half a century. Usha and her neighbors poured water on their floors and slept on wet jute mats, ancient survival tactics against a modern, man-made monster. The heat poverty is stark; while the wealthy turn up their air conditioning, pumping more waste heat into the alleyways, the poor are left to bake in homes where the indoor temperature often exceeds the outdoor heat. Across the Arabian Sea, the United Arab Emirates faced its own trial by fire. The desert has always been hot, but the summer of 2025 brought a new kind of ferocity. In Sweihan, a town in the interior, temperatures surged to 51.6 degrees Celsius in May, a record that signaled the arrival of summer before spring had even said goodbye. But in the gleaming cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the enemy was the humidity rising from the warming Persian Gulf. When the air temperature hit the mid-forties and the humidity spiked, the "feels-like" temperature—the heat index—soared to a suffocating 62 degrees Celsius in July 2024. In this steam room, the very air felt viscous. Eyeglasses fogged up instantly upon stepping outdoors. For the legions of delivery riders and construction workers who build and service these metropolises, the "Midday Break"—a mandatory pause in outdoor work during peak afternoon hours—became a lifeline. Yet, even the hours before and after the ban became dangerous. Research using Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature monitors indicates that workers are often in high-risk zones even during the "shoulder hours" of the morning and late afternoon. The heat was no longer a midday event; it was a lingering presence, a silent disaster that claimed productivity and health in equal measure. The statistics are grim. In 2024 alone, extreme climate events claimed over 2,000 lives in India, with hundreds attributed directly to the blistering heat. Heatwave days in India have risen by about 34 percent since 2010, a clear signal that the baseline has shifted. The heat is arriving earlier, with heatwaves striking as early as February in 2025, disrupting the natural rhythm of the seasons. When the Desert Drowns If heat is the silent killer, rain has become the sudden destroyer. The atmosphere, warmed by our carbon emissions, has become a thirsty sponge. For every degree of warming, the air can hold seven percent more moisture. This simple law of thermodynamics, known as the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, is the engine behind the chaos. It sucks the oceans and the land dry, exacerbating droughts, only to release that pent-up water in violent, explosive torrents. This mechanism turned April 16, 2024, into a day that the UAE would never forget. It began with a darkening sky that looked more like twilight than afternoon. A massive storm system, a "mesoscale convective system" fed by the anomalously warm waters of the Arabian Sea, parked itself over the desert. The atmosphere was carrying a moisture load that was statistically impossible a century ago. When the trigger was pulled, the heavens opened up in Al Ain and dropped 254 millimeters of rain in less than twenty-four hours. To put that in perspective, that is more rain than the country typically receives in two entire years. Dubai, a city engineered for hyper-aridity, was brought to its knees. The celebrated Sheikh Zayed Road, the artery of the city, vanished under churning brown water. Luxury cars floated like toys in a bathtub, and the world's busiest international airport ground to a halt as taxiways turned into lakes. In upscale neighbourhoods, residents watched in disbelief as water rose in their living rooms, ruining furniture and memories alike. Stories of resilience emerged from the chaos; neighbours in the Green Community rallied to share food and water, and 4x4 clubs mobilized to rescue stranded sedans. In the aftermath, whispers and rumours swirled. Was this cloud seeding gone wrong? Had we meddled too much with nature? The scientists were quick to correct the narrative. Cloud seeding might squeeze a little more rain out of a cloud, usually enhancing rainfall by 10 to 15 percent, but it cannot create a deluge of biblical proportions. Attributing such a massive storm to cloud seeding is akin to blaming a bucket of water for the sinking of the Titanic. This was not a lab experiment gone awry; this was the climate crisis knocking on the front door. As if to prove a point, the skies opened up again in late 2025 and early 2026. Ras Al Khaimah saw a month's rain in a day, and widespread flooding returned to Abu Dhabi and Dubai. These floods were not freak accidents; they were the new normal. The warming Indian Ocean is acting like a loaded gun, pointing moisture at the peninsula, and the atmosphere is pulling the trigger. The desert was drowning. The Himalayan Fury While the desert grappled with too much water, the mountains of India were facing their own reckoning. The Himalayas, the "Abode of Snow," are warming faster than the plains below. In July 2023, the delicate dance between the monsoon winds and western disturbances faltered, triggering a catastrophe in Himachal Pradesh. The mountains, unable to hold the soil together against the onslaught of intense cloudbursts, gave way. The Beas River, swollen with rage, reclaimed its floodplains. It tore through towns, washing away hotels, bridges, and highways as if they were made of matchsticks. This was a "cloudburst"—a localized, intense downpour dropping 100 millimeters of rain in an hour. As the mountains warm, the air rises faster, carrying more moisture due to that same thermodynamic sponge effect, turning what should be a heavy shower into a water bomb. But the tragedy in the mountains was compounded by human folly. We have built hotels on riverbeds and roads on fragile slopes, ignoring the geography of the land. When the river rose, it simply took back what was hers. Downstream, the story was one of urban paralysis. Cities like Chennai and Mumbai, once defined by their relationship with the sea, are now constantly threatened by it. We have concreted over our wetlands and lakes, the natural sponges that once absorbed the rains. Now, when the sky opens, the water has nowhere to go but into our homes. The floods in Chennai in 2015 and again in 2023 were not just acts of nature; they were the result of a city that had forgotten how to live with water. The Mechanics of Chaos Why is this happening? Why now? To understand the madness of the weather, we must look at the planetary engine itself. The Jet Stream, that high-altitude river of air that steers weather systems around the globe, is sputtering. Historically, the Jet Stream was driven by the temperature difference between the freezing Arctic and the warm equator. But the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as Arctic Amplification. As the ice melts and the dark ocean absorbs the sunlight, that temperature difference shrinks. The Jet Stream, once a fast, tight belt, becomes weak and wavy. It meanders like a lazy river. When it loops northward, it allows hot air to expand and get trapped, creating a "Heat Dome". This high-pressure system acts like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat and compressing it, refusing to let it disperse. This is exactly what baked North India in May 2024, holding temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius for days on end. Conversely, when the Jet Stream dips south, it spills frigid polar air into places that have no business shivering. This explains the strange paradox of cold waves in a warming world. In the winter of 2025-2026, the deserts of the UAE saw temperatures dip near freezing. On Jebel Jais, the highest peak, the thermometer hovered near zero. In Northern India, cold waves have become sharper and more unpredictable, with dense fog paralyzing transport and sudden frosts killing crops overnight. The Indian Meteorological Department noted that some areas in the north saw between eight and eleven cold wave days, nearly double the typical number. It is not that the world is cooling; it is that the refrigerator door has been left open. The climate system is not just getting hotter; it is getting wilder, losing the stability that allowed civilizations to flourish for thousands of years. The Silent Thirst Between the fire of the heatwaves and the fury of the floods lies the quiet, grinding misery of drought. It is a slow-onset disaster that doesn't make for dramatic television footage, but it erodes the very foundations of society. In India, the "silent drought" has become a perennial visitor to regions like Maharashtra and Karnataka. The mechanism is cruel. The same thirsty atmosphere that fuels the floods also sucks the moisture out of the soil during dry spells. These "flash droughts" can wither a crop in a matter of weeks. For a farmer like Dayaram in Haryana, this volatility is a death sentence. In early 2025, just as his wheat crop was entering its critical grain-filling stage, a sudden heatwave struck. The kernels shriveled before they could mature. The harvest, and his income, dropped by thirty percent. Workers refused to toil in the fields under the furnace-like sun, leaving crops to rot. This agricultural collapse threatens the food security of a nation, complicating the supply of staples like wheat and pulses. In 2019, the city of Chennai gave the world a terrifying glimpse of what happens when the water runs out. They called it "Day Zero". The city's four main reservoirs hit dead storage levels, and taps ran dry. IT companies, the engines of modern India, asked employees to work from home because there was no water to flush the toilets in the glossy office parks. Water tankers became the most valuable vehicles on the road, guarded like gold shipments. It exposed the deep fault lines of inequality: the wealthy could buy their way out of the crisis, purchasing water from private tankers sourced from peri-urban villages, while the poor waited for hours in the sun for a single pot of water. The UAE, lacking rivers, faces a permanent Day Zero risk. It relies on the energy-intensive magic of desalination, turning the salty Gulf into potable water. But recognizing the fragility of this system—vulnerable to oil spills or war—the nation has undertaken a project of pharaonic ambition. Deep in the Liwa desert, they have created one of the world's largest artificial aquifers. They pumped desalinated water back into the ground, creating a strategic reserve that can sustain the entire population of Abu Dhabi for months in an emergency. It is a triumph of engineering, a safety net woven from water and sand. The Wisdom of the Ancients As our modern glass-and-steel cities fail under the assault of this new climate, there is a growing realization that the answers might lie in the past. Our ancestors lived in these lands for centuries without air conditioning or flood pumps. They built with the climate, not against it. These "vernacular technologies" offer low-energy, high-efficiency solutions that we are now frantically rediscovering. In the blistering heat of Dubai, before the hum of electricity, the skyline was dominated by "Barjeels" or wind towers. These ingenious structures caught the slightest breeze, forced it down a shaft where it cooled, and circulated it through the living quarters. The air accelerated and cooled as it descended, displacing the hot air below without using a single watt of power. Today, this concept is seeing a revival. At Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, a massive, modern interpretation of the wind tower cools a public courtyard, proving that passive cooling is not just history; it is a viable future. In the parched lands of Rajasthan, water was too precious to be left in open tanks where the sun would steal it. The solution was the "Stepwell"—an inverted pyramid of stone that reached down to the groundwater. These structures were not just wells; they were social sanctuaries. The air at the bottom of a stepwell is naturally cooler, often five to six degrees lower than the surface, offering a retreat from the summer blaze. In cities like Jodhpur, restored stepwells like the Toorji Ka Jhalra are now acting as urban sponges, absorbing heavy rains to prevent flooding and recharging the aquifer for the dry months. And in the homes of North India, the humble "Khus" curtain is making a comeback. Woven from the dried roots of vetiver grass and sprayed with water, these curtains turn the hot, dry "Loo" wind into a cool, fragrant breeze through evaporative cooling. It is nature’s air conditioner, zero-carbon and smelling of the earth, providing relief when the power grid fails under the strain of a heatwave. Building the Ark We cannot stop the extreme weather immediately. The carbon we have already emitted has baked a certain amount of chaos into the system. But we can learn to survive it. Adaptation is no longer a choice; it is the price of admission to the future. Dubai is pivoting. Stung by the floods of 2024, the city has looked east to China's "Sponge City" concept. The goal is to tear up the concrete and replace it with permeable pavements, rain gardens, and bioswales—surfaces that drink the water rather than repel it. The ambition is to turn a flood liability into a groundwater asset, a complete reimagining of urban design that allows the city to breathe and absorb. In India, a quiet revolution is taking place in the villages. The "Amrit Sarovar" mission, launched in 2022, is perhaps the largest community-led water conservation drive in human history. The aim is simple: to restore or build seventy-five water bodies in every single district of the country. By 2025, over sixty-eight thousand of these ponds had been completed. In villages like Surajpura, the water table has risen enough to allow farmers to harvest two crops a year, breaking the cycle of migration that empties the countryside. Cities are learning too. Ahmedabad, after suffering a devastating heatwave in 2010 that killed over a thousand people, developed the Global South's first Heat Action Plan. It is a playbook for survival: color-coded early warning systems, keeping public gardens open for shade, and the "Cool Roof" initiative. By simply painting the roofs of slum dwellings with reflective white paint, indoor temperatures can drop by three to five degrees. It is a low-tech, high-impact solution that saves lives and has been replicated in dozens of Indian cities. Technology is playing its part. Artificial Intelligence is being deployed to predict the unpredictable. In the UAE, AI-driven sensors in parks monitor soil moisture and weather forecasts, adjusting irrigation to save precious water, reducing consumption by thirty percent. In India, AI models are now forecasting floods in the Ganges and Brahmaputra basins with hyper-local precision, giving villagers those few critical hours to evacuate their livestock and families before the water hits. On the global stage, new initiatives are taking root. At COP28 in Dubai, the Global Green Credit Initiative was launched to incentivize environmental actions like water conservation, moving beyond simple carbon offsets. The UAE is also leading the Mangrove Alliance for Climate, aiming to plant 100 million mangroves by 2030 to protect coastlines from rising seas and storms. The New Normal The years 2024 to 2026 have been a harsh tutor. They have taught us that the idea of "stationarity"—that the future will be like the past—is a dangerous illusion. The extreme has become the routine. The question is not whether the climate is changing; the atmosphere has already answered that. The question is whether we can change fast enough to live within it. For India, the challenge is one of scale. How do you protect a billion people from a heat that cooks the air and a monsoon that has turned into a beast?. The answer lies in decentralized resilience. It is Usha painting her roof white. It is the village of Surajpura digging a pond. It is a government that values the life of a construction worker as much as the GDP. For the UAE, the challenge is existential engineering. A nation built on the conquest of nature must now learn to cooperate with it. It must transform from a fortress against the desert into a sponge that works with the rain. The transition to permeable cities and the strategic decoupling of water security from carbon emissions are not just policy goals; they are survival imperatives. The stories from these two nations are not just local news. They are a preview of the world to come. The fire and the flood are here to stay. We are building the ark while the rain is already falling, stitching together ancient wisdom and modern science in a race against time. The sky may be broken, but our resolve to survive under it remains the one thing that is still whole. Table 1: Comparative Heat Metrics (2024-2025) MetricNew Delhi (India)Dubai (UAE)Peak Dry TempPrimary DangerVulnerable GroupNighttime ImpactSurvival Strategy Table 2: Quick Reference: Key Extremes and Solutions RegionExtreme Event TypeKey Recent ExamplesPrimary CausesAdaptation StrategyIndiaHeatwaveIndiaDroughtIndiaCloudburst/FloodUAEExtreme RainUAEHeat/HumidityUAECold Spell ...Read more
26 Mar 2026
The Winter of Awakening In the grand, often chaotic narrative of Indian urbanization, the transition from late 2025 into the early months of 2026 marked a subtle yet profound inflection point. For decades, the story of the Indian city was one of unbridled expansion—a tale written in concrete, steel, and glass, often at the expense of the very environment that sustained it. The skyline was a graph of economic ambition, rising vertically with little regard for the thermal or ecological consequences on the ground. Green architecture, where it existed, was frequently relegated to a checklist for certification or a luxury add-on for the elite—a "vertical garden" in a corporate lobby or a solar panel on a gated community roof, serving more as a badge of prestige than a functional imperative. However, the winter of 2025 brought a different kind of quiet to the four great sentinels of India’s urban landscape: Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi. Between December’s brittle cold and February’s uncertain warmth, these cities began to breathe differently. They were not merely expanding outward or upward; they were rethinking how buildings live, consume, and coexist with their inhabitants. The impetus was no longer just aesthetic or regulatory; it was existential. The harsh lessons of recent heatwaves, the choking reality of smog, and the erratic behavior of the monsoon had transformed green architecture from a niche experiment into a survival strategy. The prevailing sentiment across the Indian construction sector in 2025 was one of anxiety. The urban heat island effect had turned dense neighbourhoods into thermal traps, and water scarcity had become a chronic operational risk for large developments. The response from the architectural community, as observed over the last three months, was a pivot from "green washing"—superficial applications of sustainability—to "defensive design". This shift is characterized by a move away from the universal glass box, a remnant of Western modernism ill-suited to the tropics, toward forms that respect the local climatology. It is a negotiation between old wisdom and new technology. The data supports this transition. The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) noted that green buildings in India are now saving approximately 199.3 billion litres of water annually—equivalent to 14% of Mumbai's yearly water supply—and reducing carbon emissions by 53.1 million tonnes a year. These are not abstract figures; they represent a fundamental operational shift in how cities function. The narrative of the last three months confirms that the future of Indian cities will not be decided by how fast they grow, but by how wisely they breathe. Kolkata: The Restoration of Breath and Heritage To understand the green revolution in Kolkata, one must turn away from the gleaming glass towers of the IT corridors and look instead toward the crumbling, charismatic lanes of the north. In neighbourhoods like Shyambazar, a quiet "architectural correction" unfolded over the last few months. For decades, the aspiration of the middle class was to seal their homes—to replace slatted windows with sliding glass, to enclose balconies for extra square footage, and to rely entirely on split air conditioners to battle the stifling humidity. But as energy costs soared and the urban heat island effect intensified, a reversal began. In the winter of 2025, a century-old residential block near Shyambazar underwent a renovation that stunned observers—not for what was added, but for what was removed. Architects and conservationists, rather than demolishing the structure, chose to reopen high ventilators, shaded verandas, and internal courtyards that had been sealed over the last forty years. "We didn't invent anything new," remarked a conservation architect involved in the project. "We simply removed the mistakes of the last 40 years". This sentiment captures the essence of Kolkata's green shift: it is a reclamation of memory. The city remembered that its colonial and pre-colonial wisdom—high ceilings for thermal buoyancy, louvers for cross-ventilation, and thick walls for thermal mass—was far superior to the thin-skinned concrete boxes that replaced them. A critical component of this "correction" is the revival of lime plaster. Modern construction in India has been dominated by cement, a material that is robust but impermeable. Cement traps heat and moisture, creating a "greenhouse effect" within interiors that necessitates air conditioning. Lime, by contrast, is breathable. Research conducted in similar climatic zones in India, such as Ahmedabad, provides the scientific validation for Kolkata's intuitive return to tradition. Lime plaster possesses a significantly lower thermal conductivity (approximately 0.16 W/m-K) compared to cement plaster (1.58 W/m-K). This physical property means that lime resists the transfer of solar heat into the building envelope much more effectively than cement. Furthermore, lime acts as a natural humidity regulator. It has a high moisture buffering capacity, meaning it can adsorb excess moisture from the air during humid periods and release it when the air is dry. Studies indicate that lime-plastered buildings maintain lower indoor relative humidity levels by 6% to 10% compared to cement-plastered spaces. In a city like Kolkata, where humidity is the primary antagonist to thermal comfort, this regulation is vital. It reduces the "stuffiness" of indoor air and prevents the formation of mold, a common scourge in the humid tropics. The energy implications are profound. By reducing the internal heat load and moderating humidity, lime plaster reduces the reliance on mechanical cooling. Data suggests that lime-plastered spaces can be 3–5°C cooler than their cement counterparts, providing approximately 536 more hours of thermal comfort annually without the use of electricity. This is passive cooling in its most elemental form. While North Kolkata looks backward to move forward, the satellite townships of New Town and Rajarhat act as the city's laboratory for modern green urbanism. Here, the definition of "green" shifts from passive restoration to active technological intervention. New Town, declared a "Solar City" and "Smart Green City" by the government, represents the organized, state-driven face of sustainability. In the last three months, corporate offices and IT campuses in these areas have normalized features that were once considered experimental. Green roofs that reduce indoor temperatures by 3–4°C and sensor-based lighting systems responding to daylight availability have become standard tender language. The scale of intervention in New Town is district-wide. The authorities have implemented a 500 KW grid-connected canal-top solar power plant, utilizing the water bodies to cool the panels and increase efficiency while conserving land. Other initiatives include the installation of "Tall Tree Nurseries" to ensure a steady supply of mature trees for urban planting, and the creation of "green verges" along major arterials to act as dust buffers. The integration of technology is seamless; floating solar power plants on canals generate energy while reducing evaporation, a dual benefit that speaks to the "Smart City" ethos. Kolkata's adaptive reuse wave finds a strong resonance with European movements, particularly in cities like Copenhagen and Rome, though the drivers differ. Just as Kolkata is repurposing its heritage, Copenhagen transformed the Jaegersborg Water Tower into student housing, integrating biophilic elements such as crystal protrusions to harvest natural light. Similarly, the concept of adaptive reuse is embedded in Rome's DNA, where ancient ruins like the Teatro Marcello serve as foundations for modern life. However, a key divergence remains. In Europe, adaptive reuse often centers on aesthetic preservation and circular economy principles. In Kolkata, the primary driver is climatic survival. The reopening of a veranda in Shyambazar is not just about restoring a look; it is about restoring an airflow pattern that makes the house habitable without a generator during a power cut. It is, as the local architect noted, "repairing the relationship between buildings and the breeze from the Hooghly". Chennai: The Thermodynamics of Survival If Kolkata’s narrative is one of nostalgia and repair, Chennai’s is one of defensive warfare. The enemy is heat—relentless, radiating, and lethal. The last three months have served as a stark reminder to the city that concrete traps heat, and in a rapidly warming world, design is a matter of survival. The heatwaves of 2024 left an indelible mark on the city's psyche, shifting the priorities of homebuyers and developers alike. In residential neighbourhoods from Perumbakkam to Velachery, the conversation has shifted dramatically. Post-2024, buyers are no longer just asking about square footage or tile finishes; they are asking, "How hot does the house get at 2 pm in May?". This consumer pressure has forced a return to passive cooling architecture, a discipline that had been largely forgotten during the era of cheap electricity and ubiquitous air conditioning. The architectural response has been a retreat from the "glass box". New developments are minimizing East-West orientation to reduce solar heat gain. Builders are employing double-roof systems with air gaps, a technique where a secondary roof shields the primary slab, allowing air to circulate and carry away radiant heat before it penetrates the interior. Deep-set windows with shading fins are replacing flush facades, creating pockets of shadow that cool the air before it enters the building. The most significant and scalable development in Chennai's green architecture landscape in 2025 has been the Cool Roof Initiative. What began as a pilot project has now scaled into a city-wide movement, endorsed by global bodies like the UNEP. The concept is deceptively simple: coating terraces with white high-albedo paint, china mosaic tiles, or specialized reflective membranes. However, the impact is profound. Studies associated with the initiative demonstrate that cool roofs can lower indoor temperatures by 2–6°C in concrete homes and by as much as 13°C in dwellings with metal (tin) roofs. For low-income residents in areas like Pulianthope, this temperature drop is not just a matter of comfort; it is a health intervention that prevents heat stroke and reduces the reliance on fans, thereby lowering electricity bills. The initiative draws technical inspiration from historical Madras terrace roofing found in heritage structures like the Chepauk Palace, which used layers of lime mortar and clay tiles to naturally regulate heat. Modern cool roofs are the high-tech successors to this tradition. The program has also integrated a social sustainability component, training women’s collectives and youth groups to apply these coatings, thereby generating local employment. Green architecture in Chennai is inextricably linked to water security. The city’s history of oscillation between devastating floods and acute droughts has made Net Zero Water buildings a priority. The Radiance Regalia project stands as a testament to this new standard, becoming Tamil Nadu's first residential project to achieve both IGBC Net Zero Water and Green Homes Gold certification. The project integrates a suite of water management technologies, including dual plumbing lines for greywater recycling and advanced rainwater harvesting systems designed to handle intense rainfall bursts. Permeable paving replaces concrete pavers, allowing water to seep into the ground, reducing urban flooding and increasing groundwater recharge. Chennai's strategies share a kinship with Mediterranean cooling techniques, though the execution differs due to humidity. Seville, Spain, has experimented with reviving the ancient Persian Qanat system—underground tunnels that use water and air to cool public spaces naturally. The CartujaQanat project reduces ambient temperatures by up to 10°C using these natural techniques. While Chennai hasn't dug tunnels, its use of courtyard-based planning in new public health centers mirrors the Qanat's principle of creating cool microclimates through evaporative cooling and shading. Research comparing Chennai to Mediterranean cities like Barcelona shows that cool roofs are universally effective. However, the challenge in Chennai is greater due to humidity. A cool roof reflects radiation but does not remove moisture. Therefore, Chennai's architecture must pair reflective surfaces with ventilation—high ceilings and cross-ventilation—to remove the humid air, a nuance less critical in the dry heat of Spain. Mumbai: Verticality, Density, and the Green Premium Mumbai builds vertically because it has no choice. Constrained by the Arabian Sea on three sides and a burgeoning population within, the city’s only trajectory is up. However, the narrative of 2025/2026 is a shift from "how high" to "how responsible". The city is attempting to inject nature and efficiency into its verticality, driven by a pragmatic realization that sustainable buildings are cheaper to run. The completion of Mumbai Metro Line 3 (Aqua Line) in late 2025 has been a catalyst for this shift. This fully underground corridor connects the southern tip of Colaba to the western suburbs of Aarey, linking key business districts like Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) and MIDC. The metro is not just a transport project; it is a green spine. It has enabled a form of "green mobility" that complements green architecture. Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) around these stations is prioritizing walkability and reducing the parking footprint of new commercial towers, a major departure from the car-centric planning of the past. In the commercial hubs of Lower Parel and BKC, "green" is now a line item on the balance sheet. December 2025 marked the completion of multiple green-certified towers where the focus was on operational savings. Common areas in these towers are increasingly powered by renewable energy sources, while motion-sensor ventilation in parking levels and smart HVAC systems reduce energy loads. High-performance facades feature advanced glazing and shading devices to reduce heat ingress while maximizing daylight. One project manager noted that electricity bills dropped before full occupancy, turning finance teams—typically sceptical of the "green premium"—into advocates for sustainability. This underscores a key Mumbai trait: sustainability here is transactional. It succeeds because it saves money. A persistent aspiration in Mumbai has been the "Vertical Forest," inspired by Milan’s iconic Bosco Verticale. However, the reality of implementing this in a tropical, monsoon-heavy city is complex and fraught with challenges. Milan’s Bosco Verticale hosts 800 trees and 4,500 shrubs, effectively lowering surface temperatures by up to 30°C and indoor temperatures by 2-3°C. It is a triumph of engineering and botany. However, the maintenance is centralized and costly, estimated at $1,800 per month per unit for the gardens alone. Research indicates that in tropical climates, vertical gardens face specific challenges. High humidity can lead to fungal growth, while the intense heat of the non-monsoon months requires significant irrigation. Modular pot systems often suffer from clogging and technical failures. Instead of full-scale forests on balconies, Mumbai is opting for more pragmatic solutions: Green Walls on podiums and Terrace Gardens. Retrofitting housing societies with organic waste composting units and installing solar panels for common utilities is the more common "green" approach. It is less photogenic than Milan’s towers but more functional and financially sustainable for the average cooperative housing society. Mumbai is also in the midst of a massive redevelopment boom. Old chawls and dilapidated buildings are giving way to modern high-rises. This presents both a risk and an opportunity. The demolition generates massive waste, but the new construction offers a chance to integrate the Circular Economy. Forward-thinking developers are adopting "Zero Waste" construction methodologies, using recycled aggregates from demolished structures for non-structural applications like paving and filling. The use of fly ash bricks and AAC blocks, which utilize industrial waste, is becoming standard. While supply chain fragmentation remains a hurdle for a fully circular ecosystem, the shift is undeniable. Mumbai’s attempt to create green pockets amidst extreme density invites comparison to Barcelona’s Superblocks (Superilles). Barcelona systematically reclaimed streets from cars to create pedestrian-friendly green public spaces, reducing pollution by 30%. Mumbai lacks the regular grid structure of Barcelona to create perfect superblocks. However, the concept of "pedestrianizing" areas around new Metro stations (like BKC) and creating "green corridors" mimics this intent. The challenge is the sheer density; reclaiming even a meter of road space in Mumbai is a political and logistical battle. Yet, the integration of green mobility with green architecture offers a path toward a similar outcome: a city that prioritizes people over cars. Delhi: Designing in the Shadow of Smog In Delhi, the winter smog is not just a weather event; it is a structural determinant. The architecture of the capital has been forced to evolve into a filtration system. The narrative of the last few months is one of buildings becoming "air filters". New and renovated structures, particularly schools and hospitals, are incorporating advanced filtration technologies directly into the building envelope. Startups like UBreathe have piloted plant-based air purification systems in Delhi-NCR schools and municipal offices. These systems use "Breathing Roots" technology to amplify the natural phytoremediation of plants by up to 500 times. A pilot in a Gurugram municipal office reported a 40% reduction in indoor PM2.5 levels. Architects face the contradiction of needing ventilation while blocking pollution. Solutions include double-skin façades and filtered air intakes that allow buildings to "breathe" without inhaling the toxic particulate matter. The Delhi government’s response to pollution has shifted from temporary bans to structural mandates. The "Anti-Smog Gun" mandate for high-rise buildings and construction sites is a crude but visible example of this. While experts debate their efficacy as a long-term solution, their presence signals a securitization of the environment—architecture is now an active combatant against the air. Furthermore, the Air Pollution Mitigation Plan 2025 has introduced stricter regulations, including the installation of indoor air quality monitoring systems in public buildings. This transparency is driving demand for better-designed buildings. Delhi’s struggle with environmental management finds a constructive counterpoint in Bangkok. Bangkok faces flooding and heat, and it responded with the Chulalongkorn Centenary Park, a "sponge" park designed to tilt and collect runoff, holding a million gallons of water. It is active infrastructure disguised as a park. Delhi is adopting similar "nature-based solutions" for dust and heat. The massive tree plantation drives and the creation of "city forests" (biodiversity parks) are Delhi’s version of the sponge city—designed to trap dust and cool the air. Tokyo has mandated green roofs since 2001 to combat the urban heat island. Delhi is moving in this direction, with bodies like the NDMC incentivizing rooftop greening to combat the thermal inversion that traps smog over the city. The primary driver for green architecture in Delhi has shifted from Energy (saving electricity) to Health (saving lungs). Parents demand schools with air purification; office goers choose buildings with "indoor air quality monitoring" screens in the lobby. Green architecture here is a public health intervention. Global Convergences: A Comparative Architectural Critique The evolution of green architecture in India does not happen in isolation. It is a dialogue with global trends, adapted to the specific constraints of the Indian context. Bangkok’s Benjakitti Forest Park and Chulalongkorn Park have set the gold standard for Asian megacities, functioning as active infrastructure that manages floods and filters water through wetlands. Indian cities are adopting this in fragments, with Mumbai’s flood-resilient basements and Chennai’s recharge wells serving as micro-sponges. However, India lacks a grand, central "Sponge Park" on the scale of Bangkok, though the opportunity lies in transforming Delhi’s Yamuna floodplains or Kolkata’s East Kolkata Wetlands into formally designed resilience landscapes. Milan’s Bosco Verticale proved that trees can live in the sky. In India, this concept often gets diluted to "potted plants on balconies" due to cost. However, the impact of Green Walls (vertical gardens) on microclimates is measurable. In Mumbai and Delhi, they are serving as dust screens and sound barriers, though the challenge remains maintenance; without the automated, sensor-driven irrigation of Milan, Indian vertical gardens often turn into brown walls in summer. Globally, cool roofs are a standard energy-saving measure. Chennai has turned this into a community movement, providing immediate human relief for the non-AC population. This is a critical distinction: in the West, green architecture saves carbon; in India, it saves lives. Green architecture is living architecture, and it requires care. The research on vertical gardens in tropical climates highlights a "constant maintenance difficulty," driven by the high cost of irrigation systems, pruning, and structural waterproofing. The solution lies in developing native plant palettes that are drought-resistant, moving away from exotic ornamental species to robust local flora that can survive an Indian summer with minimal water. The "take-make-waste" model is ending, and the Circular Economy is becoming central to real estate. Urban Mining—recovering materials from demolished buildings for new construction—is gaining traction in Mumbai’s redevelopment sector. While circular construction requires higher initial investment, lifecycle cost analyses validate the economic advantages through operational efficiencies and reduced waste management costs. There is a growing realization that "green" commands a premium. Green-certified buildings in Mumbai and Bangalore attract higher rentals and better quality tenants. This economic incentive is driving developers to adopt IGBC and LEED standards not just for the environment, but for the bottom line. By 2026, the myth of the "green premium" was collapsing. While green buildings demanded higher upfront investment, lifecycle costs told a different story. Reduced energy consumption, lower water dependence, and healthier indoor environments translated into tangible financial returns. Future Horizons: The Smart, Biophilic City of 2030 As we look toward the rest of 2026 and beyond, several trends are crystallizing that will define the next decade of Indian architecture. The future is digital. By 2026, "Smart Homes" in Indian metros will move beyond voice assistants to fully integrated Energy Management Systems. AI algorithms will optimize HVAC usage based on occupancy and weather patterns, shifting from passive sustainability to active, data-driven efficiency. Homes will "learn" the thermal habits of their occupants and adjust accordingly to minimize waste. The concept of Biophilia—the innate human connection to nature—is moving from interior design to urban planning. Trends include "breathing" facades, indoor forests in corporate campuses, and the integration of biodiversity corridors in city master plans. The goal is to blur the boundary between the "built" and the "natural". The role of government policy will be decisive. Linking green compliance to FSI (Floor Space Index) incentives—allowing developers to build more if they build green—is a powerful tool. Maharashtra and West Bengal already offer such incentives, and their broader enforcement could tip the scale. The adoption of rigorous energy codes like the ECBC (Energy Conservation Building Code) for residential buildings will ensure that the "green" label is backed by verifiable performance. The Resilient Sentinel The story of green architecture in India’s metros in late 2025 and early 2026 is not one of uniform aesthetic or singular technology. It is a mosaic of local responses to global crises. Kolkata has looked backward to move forward, finding solace in the breathable lime plaster of its ancestors. Chennai has painted itself white to reflect the sun’s fury. Mumbai has engineered its way upward, attempting to balance density with efficiency. Delhi has turned its buildings into lungs to survive the smog. These cities are no longer building "green" for the sake of a plaque on the wall. They are building for survival. The "green building" has evolved into the "resilient building". These sentinels are awake, and they are turning green not out of vanity, but out of necessity. It is reactive, born from heat, flood, and smog. It is pragmatic, valuing electricity savings and thermal comfort over visual gimmicks. It is indigenous, rediscovering local materials and passive wisdom. Together, they tell a single, powerful story: the future of Indian cities will not be decided by how fast they grow, but by how wisely they breathe. In that adaptation lies not just sustainability, but dignity, health, and survival. The cities are learning again. And for the first time ...Read more
