Category Center for Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development

Sustainable Environment & the Budget: Need for Consonance

The Union Budget 2023-24 is expected to be a barometer for the Central Government’s policy commitments toward the conservation of the environment and sustainable development. The public policy challenge for the government is how to strike a balance between economic growth and sustainable development, which are at variance due to the onslaught of climate change and its increasing economic costs. On the one hand, the government wants to achieve a $ 5 trillion economy by 2025 and $26 trillion by 2047; on the other, it has set a target of net-zero emissions by 2070. A balanced Budget that intertwines economic growth with inclusive and sustainable development for restoring the ecosystems is needed.

Colonial Land Rights ‘deprivation’ caused Joshimath Catastrophe

The residents of Joshimath in Uttarakhand are coming out in protest. Land subsidence in the region has put their lives, houses, and town at risk and impacted the surrounding land. As part of the relief efforts, at-risk families are being shifted to temporary relief centres, and work is underway on building transition centres, where they can stay till a long-term solution can be worked out.

India’s Urbanisation Policies: Impact & Challenges

‘Another important aspect of urban infrastructure is linked to urban governance, which is in a shambles in most parts of the country.’

A report by the World Bank, released in November last year, on financing India’s urban infrastructure needs, focuses on private investments ameliorating urban problems. The push to attract private capital, since the 1990s, followed by the urban reforms under the United Progressive Alliance I regime, the Smart City mission, and now this report, continues to plague India’s policy paradigm in the urban sector.

How Technology Access and Climate Gap Impact CO2 Removal?

The global cleavage on climate change is essentially between those that have grown rich enough to be climate-resilient and those that are not. The way to bridge this gap is not to set up any Loss and Damage Fund, but to spend any money that the rich countries have to spare on sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere.

India’s Global Leadership Aspirations through G20 Presidency

The G20 was conceived in 1999 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis as a platform for finance ministers and central bank governors to deliberate on issues pertaining to global finance and economy. In 2008, it was elevated to include the heads of State against the backdrop of global recession. Today, representing more than 80 per cent of the world’s GDP, 75 per cent of global trade, and 60 per cent of the global population amid a crisis of global multilateralism, G20 has emerged as a premier forum for deliberation on global issues.

Fiscal Deficit as a Shape-Shifter in India

The fiscal deficit created now translates into a higher debt burden that future generations have to service. Is that fair? It is more than fair. In the misty mornings of peak winter, a flock of sharp-beaked, joyless birds takes flight in the capital – Fiscal Deficit Hawks, who swoop down on North Block, where harried finance ministry officials race against time to prepare the Union government’s annual budget, to screech sharp orders to slash the fiscal deficit.

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