Monika Mondal

ntil the 1980s, Kolleru Lake was a sprawling shallow body of water. At its deepest point during the monsoon season, the water only reached 10 feet, yet the lake covered a surface area of 350 square miles — roughly the size of Dallas, Texas. Located in the southeast state of Andhra Pradesh, Kolleru was among India’s largest freshwater lakes. Known for its biodiversity, the lake was a popular stopover for migratory birds, such as flamingos, which fed from the shallows. Humans, too, derived sust...

Last month at COP26 in Glasgow, more than 100 countries pledged to reduce global methane emissions by 30% by the end of the decade, compared to 2020 levels. If implemented in full, scientists said, the pledge could stave off 0.2 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050. India, currently the world’s third largest methane emitter, was a notable absence from the list of signatories, along with China and Russia, the first and second biggest emitters.

One of the highlights of this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP26, has been that over 40 countries pledged to phase out coal from the power sector. However, beyond power generation, some of the most heavy-polluting, fossil fuel-reliant industries are steel, iron, cement, and concrete – the same industries that are crucial to aspirations of development in Asia and beyond.
While developed countries have moved away from the secondary economy (manufacturing) to the tertiary economy (serv...

Finance Day at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference was on November 3, 2021. However, the developing world started the conversation around climate financing way before that date, urging rich nations to pay their fair share of the climate crisis.
In spite of this, a week after negotiators started discussing the rule book of the Paris agreement, climate finance continues to be a concern for developing countries as the details on disbursement, capital type and definition of climate fina...

By the evening of 1 November 2021, India had captured the spotlight in Glasgow. The country announced a new net zero target by 2070, which meant that all major economies in the world now planned to reach zero emissions. To meet this target, India is already setting up some major renewable infrastructure projects.
India’s 2070 date is 20 years later than the promise made by the UK, US and other high-income countries to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. It is also a decade later than China, R...

Glasgow: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be sharing India's track record on climate action on November 1, 2021, at the United Nations' Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP26), under way in Glasgow, Scotland. Countries are expected to hammer out agreements on climate issues such as reaching net zero emissions and creating new carbon markets, which have been on hold since the Paris climate agreement was signed at COP21 in Paris in December 2015.

New Delhi: The latest plan announced by rich countries for funding climate action in developing countries will be ineffective because the amount is inadequate and the plan does not address chronic flaws in climate finance, experts say.

4.6 billion years ago each Earth Day was roughly 6 hours long.
Since then, the earth has undergone several changes that gradually slowed it down to our familiar 24 hour day. Felix W. Landerer, a Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California says, “Events like earthquakes, tsunamis, and shifts in tectonic plates led to a change in the distribution of mass on the earth—and hence—its speed.”

Bycatch and waste fishes which were previously used in pig farming and poultry are extensively being routed to Fish Meal and Fish Oil (FMFO). About one third of the entire marine landings in India goes to the fish meal industry.

In a splendid blend of art and science, Monika Mondal pulls together sound, perspectives, and quantitative data to explain how changing monsoon patterns and economic pressures are shaping agriculture in Muzaffarnagar, known for its sugar farms and mills in the sugar bowl of India, Uttar Pradesh.

It was about a year and a half ago that 30-year-old Nayimuddin Ansari last looked at his three children without any problem in his vision. On a sunny afternoon in March last year, while Ansari was going home, something got into his eyes. He stopped on the side of the highway, next to the Triveni sugar mill—the largest in Asia—in the Uttar Pradesh town of Khatauli. He rubbed his eyes to try to get rid of the irritant. A few days later, he had pain, and then an infection, in his eyes. “The loca...

NEW DELHI — Samosas and jalebis are typical Indian snacks, but for residents of a slum in the southeastern region of Delhi, they are also useful terms for getting around the neighborhood.
“Samosa Chowk and Jalebi Chowk are important landmarks of my colony,” said Meera, 50, who does not have a legal last name. “And the Shani bazaar [Saturday market] is a no miss. But you have to be alert as it gets dark.” Markers like these, in lieu of typical directions, are how Meera gets around her neighbor...

Monkeys and humans are fighting for space in Indian cities. Right now, it doesn’t look like a winnable war.
On a summer evening in the mid-1980s, the primatologist Iqbal Malik got a phone call from Tughlakabad village in Southeast Delhi. “Madam ji, come soon,” a desperate voice at the other end said. “They’re taking them away from the site.”

Rao Gulab Singh Lodhi, a farmer from Madhya Pradesh, a semi-arid region in central India, cultivated a variety of chickpeas in a small portion of his land in the 2019-2020 season.
Climate breakdown will stress essential food crops. Scientists and farmers in India are working together to find a solution for chickpeas.

On a cold morning in the early winter of 2019, farmer Shekhar Chauhan reached his small sugarcane farm to start a regular work day, only to find it flooded. The boundary of a nearby drain had broken and water spilled into the farms in the Muzaffarnagar district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. A significant amount of Chauhan’s crops was lost.

Chauhan complained to the management of one of the eight sugar mills in the district. He said the mill was releasing water in the narrow d...