Hello, and welcome to the first edition of From a Climate Correspondent, a newsletter exploring the climate crisis around the globe.
We are four environmental journalists who have, for various reasons, found ourselves working in regions outside our home continent.
We will be sharing personal reflections on the fight against climate change, highlighting key science and policy developments, and sharing some of the best local and international environmental journalism from the regions where we live – namely Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and South Asia.
As the project grows, we’d also love to bring in more voices and perspectives, so please do get in touch if you’re reporting on the climate crisis and this has sparked thoughts you’d like to share.
This first issue focuses on India, where reporter Lou Del Bello describes the impact of Delhi's pollution on the lives of her and those around her. She also looks at the concerning messages for Indians from the recent Lancet climate and health report and examines what India’s upgraded renewables pledge means.
This is a weekly newsletter which will rotate around the four regions of focus. Look out for climate dispatches from the various regions in coming weeks.
Thanks for reading!
From a Climate Correspondent team - India, Jocelyn, Lou and Mat
Disclaimer: While some of us work regularly for other publications, this newsletter is not affiliated with any organisation
Braving the pollution season
Letter no. 1 by Lou Del Bello in Delhi, India
If you are spending the winter in Delhi, chances are most days you’ll wake up feeling like you have a bad cold. And that’s if you are lucky to have an air purifier running overnight. If you don’t have a filter or your home is simply not well insulated, a thick fog may be filling your living room by the time you get up.
Delhi’s pollution season is an endurance test for everyone, from those who are able to equip their homes and offices to keep harmful particles out, to those who work outside and have only a handkerchief protecting their nose from the smog.
With air quality remaining critical for most of the season, many retreat indoors, but the bustle of the Indian capital doesn’t slow. Delhiites adapt, they refuse to become slaves of the Air Quality Index (AQI), that little red flag on your monitoring app. After all, these months will be forgotten in the spring.
And contrary to other polluted places like Beijing, you won’t see many people wearing masks, even at times of the day when the haze is at its peak. People will say they don't need them because they have “strong lungs” or the masks are useless anyway.
The nonchalant attitude that is the norm here may help people cope mentally, but it also puts them at risk, particularly children and the elderly.
Save the children
Schools have been closed on and off over the past few weeks, as mandated by the Supreme Court of India. But on Children’s Day, celebrated in India 14 November, at least a thousand children braced the outdoors for a charity event to mark the occasion. They ran without masks in pollution levels ten times higher than the safe threshold established by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
While air quality remains poor in Delhi all year round, in the months between October and February pollution from a mix of sources, including stubble burning from neighbouring states, coal fired power plants and construction dust, envelopes the city with smog. People get sick with cold-like symptoms. In the long run, exposure increases the risk of developing hypertension and cancer, among other conditions.
The Lancet Countdown, the medical journal’s flagship yearly report on health and climate change out in November, reminded us that in India climate change and air pollution are exacerbating each other at the expense of children in particular.
Fossil fuel combustion contributes to both climate change and PM2.5 air pollution, a major problem for India’s cities, the researchers said. In India, over 97,000 people are estimated to have died too early as a result of direct coal burning exposure alone, a figure that rises when air pollution is taken into account.
The report recommends that India comes up with a strategy to phase out coal and accelerate the transition to low carbon and renewable energy sources; something Modi’s government is tackling at least on paper.
However, Axios’s Amy Harder may well be speaking about India when she says that ‘like adding salad to your pasta doesn’t help you lose weight, adding cleaner energy to a world run on fossil fuels won’t cut greenhouse gas emissions.” While the government is serious about adding more renewable energy to the grid, it doesn’t like to talk about how it’s going to phase out coal, because there doesn’t seem to be a plan for that.
Must reads from the region
As Delhi chokes, power plants are set to miss emissions deadline, by Rajesh Kumar Singh, Bloomberg, 11 November 2019
Yes, India is making great strides in renewable energy, but it’s still massively dependent on fossil fuels. The government also struggles to enforce emission regulations on polluting industries, in particular on the powerful power producer lobby.
Experts in India find out how 18,000 birds died in 10 days, by Mohammad Ali, Al Jazeera, 20 November 2019
Thousands of migratory birds were discovered dead around Sambhar Lake, in Rajasthan, northern India. But this is also an evolving story, as thousands more are dying in other parts of India. Researchers fear that the cause may be a dangerous strain of avian influenza known as H5N1.
The Green Climate Fund must be a champion for real sustainability, by Tarun Gopalakrishnan, Down To Earth, 8 November 2019
“The most obvious thing about the newest round of funding for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is that it will not be enough,” writes Tarun Gopalakrishnan from the Centre For Science and Environment in New Delhi, adding that GCF’s representative governance structure means it is not the preferred avenue for climate finance.
Delhi is engulfed by toxic pollution. Why isn’t anyone wearing masks? By Joanna Slater and Niha Masih, The Washington Post, 14 November
Washington Post journalists decided to get to the bottom of Delhiites’ resistance to wearing masks by asking them what’s so off-putting about them.
India: Intimations of an Ending. The rise of Modi and the Hindu far right, by Arundhati Roy, The Nation, 22 November
The author argues that "the dismantling of the idea of liberty, fraternity, and equality will be—in fact already is—the first casualty of the climate crisis," with the Indian government's interest in Kashmir being driven by securing access to the region's five rivers as much as anything else.
What else I've been reading ...
The Great Smog of India, by Siddharth Singh
India’s pollution is not only an environmental and public health crisis, but also a mystery that leaves policymakers helpless. From banning fireworks during the Indian iconic “festival of lights” Diwali, to enforcing odd-even traffic restrictions, nothing seems to cut it.
India’s smog is the elusive silent killer that every winter makes the headlines, but claims lives all year round. Follow energy and climate policy expert Singh in this eye opening, heartbreaking journey as he unveils the human side of the environmental crisis.