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Environment

Pledges, plans, and actions: An analysis of India’s Panchamrit pledges

  • Perspectives

The role of regulatory innovation in reversing India’s environmental degradation

In the Yale Environmental Performance Index, India ranked last out of 180 countries. Anant Sudarshan examines the broader economic and developmental costs of environmental degradation. Based on the li...

  • Perspectives

Economic dynamics of natural disasters: Evidence from the Kerala floods

To understand the economic impact of natural disasters, this article uses the 2018 floods in Kerala – a time when it received higher rainfall than the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu...

  • Articles

Reducing information barriers to solar adoption: Experimental evidence from India

A large number of people lack access to reliable and high-quality electricity supply. Off-grid solar technologies can fill this gap, but adoption remains low. This article looks at the role of informa...

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The ‘Right to Energy’ and carbon tax: A game changer in India

India's carbon emissions in 2014 were more than three times its level in 1990. While the emissions have increased sharply, their distribution across income groups is extremely skewed. The poor in Indi...

  • Perspectives

Compensatory afforestation funds: A means or an end?

India has one of the most ambitious targets for forest cover as part of its Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement which will require considerable land and financial resources. In ...

  • Perspectives

Gone with the wind: Crop-burning and the human costs of pollution

Globally, an estimated 4 million people die prematurely because of air pollution every year. This article exploits seasonal changes in air quality arising due to agricultural fires – used by farmers...

  • Articles

Rural electrification and structural transformation: A guar(anteed) bet?

Is large-scale electrification necessary for the structural transformation of rural economies? This article combines two natural experiments in India – an exogenous agricultural boom in the northwes...

  • Articles

Nobel laureate William Nordhaus’ ideas for India

William Nordhaus has won a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contribution to climate economics. In this post, Dean Spears discusses Nordhaus’ work and its implications for India. He...

  • Perspectives

Understanding India’s energy and emissions future

India is an important player in global climate change mitigation, and it is crucial to understand its energy and emissions future. Projections for India’s 2030 CO2 emissions from energy range from 9...

  • Articles

Financing scale-up of rooftop solar power via municipal bonds

While India’s solar power generation capacity has increased dramatically in recent years, the rate of deployment of rooftop solar is still insufficient to achieve the national targets. In this post,...

  • Perspectives

Rural Electrification with Off-Grid Community Microgrids: An Impact Evaluation in Uttar Pradesh, India

This project assesses the socioeconomic effects of solar microgrids. The lack of access to electricity is a major obstacle to the socioeconomic development of more than a billion people.

  • IGC Research on India

Pollution Externalities and Health: A Study of Indian Rivers

In many developing countries, environmental quality remains low and policies to improve it have been inconsistently effective. This project conducts a case study of environmental policy, focussing on ...

  • IGC Research on India

Impact of groundwater accessibility on performance of firms

While labour laws and capital have been identified as key constraints to industrial growth, there is scant evidence on whether accessibility of vital natural resources, such as groundwater, also influ...

  • IGC Research on India

Temperature and human capital in India

A large proportion of the population in India has agrarian livelihoods that remain climate-exposed. The number of hot days per year in the country are expected to double by the end of this century. T...

  • Articles

Clearing the air: The effects of transparency on plant pollution emissions

Of the 20 cities in the world with the worst fine particulate air pollution, 13 are in India. If good information on who pollutes is available, then traditional environmental regulation can bring down...

  • IGC Research on India

Recent Contributors

Robert C M

Robert C M Beyer

World Bank

Abhinav

Abhinav Narayanan

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Gogol

Gogol Mitra Thakur

Centre for Development Studies

Anant

Anant Sudarshan

Energy Policy Institute at Chicago

Eyal

Eyal Frank

Harris School of Public Policy

Navroz K.

Navroz K. Dubash

Centre for Policy Research

Anirudh

Anirudh Sridhar

Centre for Policy Research

Ashwini K.

Ashwini K. Swain

Centre for Policy Research

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Most Popular Environment Posts

Happy Seeder: A solution to agricultural fires in north India

It is believed that much of the pollution in Delhi in November every year originates in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana where farmers burn their fields to dispose of crop residue. This ...

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Has environmental regulation been successful in India?

India has an impressive number of environmental regulations – but have they been a success? This column presents evidence that while initiatives such as catalytic converters for cars have reduced ai...

  • Articles

Learnings from emissions trade in India

India, and many developing nations in other parts of the world take solace in the U-shaped Kuznets curve: a belief in this inverse relationship between income and environmental quality results in not ...

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