greenhouse effect Archives

A recent IISc study showed a shocking 88% decline in green spaces in Bangalore

Development/Growth

When cities were Nature’s haven: a tale from Bangalore

16th November 2017

We tend to think that nature and cities are polar opposites. Delhi’s steadily worsening ‘airpocalypse’ only reinforces this binary. But this wasn’t always so. In her book ‘Nature in the City’, Harini Nagendra takes a deep dive into Bangalore’s ecological history, going way back in the past to the 6th century CE, with surprising results….

Image from an IISc study showing sharp (88%) decline in Bangalore's vegetation

Bookshelf

The end of nature: Why India is becoming a drier, hotter and angrier country

11th November 2016

Samar Halarnkar writes: In Nature in the City, her evocative exploration of Bangalore’s natural history, Harini Nagendra, says, “… residents engaged in practices such as placing a plate of warm rice (often with ghee added) outside to feed crows, leaving water baths for birds in the summer, and sugar and milk for ants and reptiles.”…

Development/Growth

The dying gulmohars of Bangalore and urban India’s forbidding future

18th July 2016

The de-greening of India’s cities is creating water-starved heat-islands. Bangalore may be India’s most drastic example, but the short-sighted assault on greenery is nationwide. Projections show that in 2030, Kolkata’s vegetation cover will be just 3.37% (from 34% in 1980), Ahmedabad’s 3% (from 37% in 1990) and Bangalore’s 14% by 2020 (from 46% in 1992)….

CLIMATE CRISIS

News update

6th March 2015

Lester Brown: ‘Vast dust bowls threaten tens of millions with hunger’ The Guardian, UK Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarfs the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned. Over 50 years, the writer Lester…