Section

Environment

The planet, the wildlife, the energy transition and what is genuinely working.

India's Non-Fossil Power Capacity Passed 50 Per Cent in June 2025, Five Years Ahead of Its 2030 Pledge, and Reached 308 GW by 30 September 2026

A dated series of official counts from 2014 to 2026, what the ministry includes as non-fossil, how the 50 per cent target and the 500 GW pledge differ, and what share of electricity the plants actually supplied.

India's Green Hydrogen Mission Has Awarded 3,000 MW of Electrolyser Capacity and 756,100 Tonnes a Year of Hydrogen Production Since 2023

Who won the SIGHT tenders, what green ammonia and refinery hydrogen cost, which plants already run, and how the awarded and commissioned tonnes compare with the 2030 goal.

India Reached 171 GW of Installed Solar in September 2026, Up From 2.82 GW in 2014, and Its Approved Module Factories Can Make About 228 GW a Year

Yearly additions since 2014, the Kamuthi, Pavagada and Bhadla parks, what a unit of solar power has sold for, and how module, cell and wafer manufacturing is growing alongside installations.

Rajasthan's Thar Holds About 130 Great Indian Bustards, 97 More Live in Two Breeding Centres, and Two Captive-Bred Males Were Released on 4 October 2026

A critically endangered bird that flies into power lines, three court orders about those lines, and a breeding programme that has just begun releasing birds. What is counted and what is only estimated.

India's 2013 Cyclone Phailin Directly Killed 21 People Where the 1999 Odisha Super Cyclone Killed About 9,900, and Better Forecasts Were Only Part of the Reason

About 9,900 people died in 1999 even though a warning went out more than 48 hours ahead. What changed afterwards, and which storms since then still killed dozens.

The Ministry of Earth Sciences Reports a Seasonal Monsoon Forecast Error of 3.1 Percent of Normal for 2021 to 2025, Against 7.8 Percent for 2016 to 2020, and IMD's 2026 Forecasts of 92 and 90 Percent Landed Within Their Margins of the 87 Recorded

The machinery behind the monsoon, a seasonal forecast record the ministry reports as tightening to a 3.1 percent average error, and the 2026 season at 87 percent of normal that both IMD forecasts anticipated as below normal. The Kerala onset was forecast for 26 May and came on 4 June.

Salim Ali's Book of Indian Birds Described 181 Species in 1941, His Ten-Volume Handbook With S. Dillon Ripley Was Complete in 1974, and His Appeals Helped Protect Keoladeo and Silent Valley

A boy with an air gun and a sparrow with a yellow throat grew into the author of the subcontinent's standard bird books and a steady correspondent of Indira Gandhi on forests and wetlands. What the record shows, and where the accounts differ.

India Says It Has 3,682 Tigers. It Also Says 3,167. And It Photographed 3,080.

All three numbers are real, all three are official, and they mean different things. Getting from one to the other explains both the biggest conservation win of the last fifty years and the argument nobody has settled.

Namami Gange Has Disbursed Rs 21,340 Crore Since 2014 and Completed Sewage Projects With 4,263 MLD of Capacity, and Varanasi's Assi Ghat Now Tests at 790 Against a Faecal Bacteria Limit of 2,500

Twelve years of money, sewage plants and river tests in one place, starting with what has been built and measured, and with the Prayagraj water dispute of February 2025 told from the regulator's, the state board's and the chief minister's own words.

The Gharial Went From Fewer Than 200 Animals Worldwide in 1974 to 1,857 Counted in the Chambal Alone by 2019, After Project Crocodile Released More Than 5,000 Head-Started Animals

Project Crocodile's head-start releases rebuilt the Chambal herd, which reached 1,857 animals in 2019. The later counts, the toxin that killed 113 in one winter and the 2026 sand-mining orders are set beside it.

The Largest Oil Spill in History Was Not an Accident

Deepwater Horizon leaked about four million barrels and became the most famous spill on earth. NOAA's estimate for the Persian Gulf in 1991 starts at six million, and almost nobody can tell you the date it happened.

A Jury Told Exxon to Pay $5 Billion for Poisoning Alaska. Nineteen Years Later, the Court Cut It by 90%

The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster fouled 1,300 miles of Alaskan coast and killed a quarter-million seabirds. A jury tried to make Exxon pay $5 billion. What happened to that penalty over 19 years tells you how accountability really works.

For 87 Days, Oil Poured Into the Gulf. The Record $20 Billion Settlement Still Didn't Cover the Damage

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout killed 11 workers and poured millions of barrels into the Gulf. It produced the largest environmental settlement in US history, and a decade of damage no cheque could price.

A Well Bled Into the Gulf of Mexico for 294 Days, Three Times Longer Than Deepwater Horizon. The Total Ever Paid to America Was $4 Million

Thirty years before Deepwater Horizon, an almost identical blowout happened in almost the same sea, and ran more than three times as long. Then Pemex said one word, immunity, and the bill never came.

Sundarlal Bahuguna Walked 4,870 Kilometres From Kashmir to Kohima for the Himalayan Forests, Declined the Padma Shri in 1981 and Was Named a Padma Vibhushan in 2009

A Gandhian from Tehri Garhwal, a cooperative in Gopeshwar and the women of one village each have a claim on the Chipko story. What the documents say about who did what, and where the dates disagree.

Gujarat's Asiatic Lions Rose From 523 in 2015 to 891 in 2025 and Now Range Over About 35,000 Square Kilometres in 11 Districts, Including Barda, Which They Reached in 2023

Lions now turn up in Barda and along the Bhavnagar coast. The census figures, the satellite populations beyond Gir and Project Lion come first, then the 2013 court order, the 2018 virus outbreak and a disputed explanation for eight cub deaths in 2026.

The Ozone Layer Is Healing: the Environmental Disaster We Actually Fixed

CFCs were tearing a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica by the 1980s. The Montreal Protocol banned them within years, and the sky has been mending on schedule ever since.

Most Reefs in the Andamans and the Gulf of Mannar Recovered From the 2023 to 2024 Bleaching, the Ministry of Earth Sciences Told Parliament, While Lakshadweep Has Been Surveyed Since 1998 and 1,439 Square Kilometres of Reef Are Mapped

Indian institutions have surveyed the country's reefs since 1998, and the recovery they recorded comes first here. Share bleached, share dead and share of seabed covered in live coral are three different numbers, and they sit side by side for each bleaching year with the papers and replies that give them.

India Counts Its Tigers With Camera Traps at 32,588 Locations and Reports a Range of 3,167 to 3,925, While Its 891 Lions Are Counted by More Than 3,000 People Watching for 24 Hours

A handful of repeat sightings is enough to estimate how many tigers the cameras missed. Gujarat's lions are still counted by people standing watch, and the state reports one figure.

Delhi's Annual PM2.5 Declined From 114 Micrograms per Cubic Metre in 2018 to 97 in 2025, the Lowest in CAQM's Series Apart From the Covid Year, Over Years of BS-VI Fuel, the Badarpur Closure and the Graded Response Action Plan

Eight years of official averages with 2025 among the lowest, the policies of the period, and then the winter peak, an AQI of 78 in July against 354 in November, and the studies that rank the sources differently.