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Subject: Climate Change

1. Global Warming and Issues
2. All about Pollution

  • Nepal wants climate compensation, putting major emitters on the hookNepal wants climate compensation, putting major emitters on the hook

    Nepal wants climate compensation, putting major emitters on the hookNepal wants climate compensation, putting major emitters on the hook

    Why in the News

    Nepal has demanded direct climate compensation from the United States, China and India, the world’s three largest emitters. The demand follows the glacial collapse of 26 August on the Nepal China border, which killed over 1,200 people and buried hydropower tunnels and valleys downstream. Nepal’s Foreign Minister has framed the country as paying the ultimate price for a crisis it did not create.

    What is the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage?

    1. What it is for: It is the dedicated financing mechanism for climate damage that has already occurred and can no longer be adapted to, as distinct from funds for mitigation or for adaptation.
    2. How it came about: Vulnerable nations secured its establishment at COP27 in 2022, after decades of resistance from developed countries to any dedicated loss and damage facility.
    3. When it began operating: It was operationalised a year later at COP28.
    4. Where it sits: It is temporarily hosted by the World Bank, which places a development lender at the centre of a compensation mechanism.

    Why does Nepal sit at the centre of climate injustice?

    1. Its own contribution is negligible: Nepal accounts for 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and generates almost all its electricity from renewable hydropower.
    2. Its geography is the exposure: The Hindu Kush Himalayas, described as the “Third Pole”, are warming at nearly twice the global average, and their glaciers are melting at 10 times their historical norms.
    3. The driver is remote, not local: Warming in the North Eurasian Arctic disrupts planetary waves and the stratospheric polar vortex, which in turn destabilises the South Asian monsoon.
    4. The scale was misread: The major powers treated the event as a localised weather emergency manageable with temporary relief, when the cryosphere failure cascaded down into densely populated valleys.

    What did the disaster do to Nepal’s economy?

    1. It struck the sector the country had bet on: Nepal’s strategy for economic sovereignty rested on harnessing 43,000 MW of commercially viable hydropower to become a regional energy exporter, and it had only recently achieved net exporter status.
    2. A tenth of installed capacity is gone: The floods crippled approximately 10 percent of installed capacity, wiping out older surface level plants such as Devighat and burying under construction projects in mud.
    3. The trade position reversed overnight: A country banking on power exports to narrow its trade deficit with India halted exports and began importing power to survive the winter.
    4. Rebuilding costs more than building did: Climate resilient underground engineering will raise future project costs by 10 to 12 percent.
    5. The bill is a tenth of the economy: Total damages are estimated between 4 billion dollars and 7 billion dollars, roughly a tenth of Nepal’s entire gross domestic product.

    Why has Nepal named the United States, China and India?

    1. The case against the United States is cumulative: America accounts for over 20 percent of cumulative global emissions since 1850, which anchors the claim in historical liability rather than current output.
    2. The case against China is proximity and data: China is the current top annual emitter, and Nepali officials had asked at a bilateral meeting in Kathmandu in May 2026 for real time data sharing on glacial lakes and avalanches in the Tibetan region.
    3. What China supplied instead: Beijing provided only heavy rain forecasts, and the absence of transboundary early warning proved fatal when the glacial lake burst.
    4. The case against India inverts India’s own argument: New Delhi has long cited low per capita emissions and demanded “common but differentiated responsibilities” from the West, and Nepal now applies that logic regionally to South Asia’s largest economy and emitter.
    5. India’s regional conduct is part of the charge: India’s refusal to buy power from Nepali projects built by Chinese contractors has complicated Nepal’s recovery and spread the friction horizontally across the region.

    Why can the existing fund not answer the demand?

    1. The fund is smaller than one country’s damage: It holds a mere 700 million dollars in pledges, against a single catastrophe costing several billion.
    2. The grant ceiling makes the arithmetic absurd: Pilot phase rules cap individual grants at between 5 million and 20 million dollars, so the maximum available payout answers a fraction of one percent of the loss.
    3. Speed is the second failure: The mechanism is handicapped by slow moving bureaucracy, and Nepal’s out of cycle demand on 1 September forces its board to decide whether it can respond to a live emergency at all.
    4. Compensation may arrive as debt: Debt saddled developing nations fear that money routed through a development lender converts into loans, turning a liability payment into a further obligation.
    5. The major powers answered with relief, not liability: China and India responded with helicopters, rescue teams and medicines, which supplies assistance while conceding no legal responsibility.

    Challenges to Nepal’s compensation claim

    1. The climate treaty framework expressly rules out liability: The decision adopting the Paris Agreement records that loss and damage provisions do not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation. Eg. Developed countries insisted on that language in 2015 as the price of accepting loss and damage in the text at all.
      The Fix: Pursue the claim through state responsibility and human rights forums in parallel, so the treaty carve out does not extinguish the legal route entirely.
    2. Attributing a single collapse to named emitters is contested: Compensation requires linking one event to specific contributors, and attribution science produces probabilities rather than the causal certainty a liability claim needs. Eg. The International Court of Justice advisory proceedings on climate obligations turned substantially on whether such a link can ground state responsibility.
      The Fix: Commission an independent forensic attribution study of the 26 August collapse before the claim reaches any forum, so the demand rests on published evidence.
    3. Pledged climate money has a record of not arriving: Announced sums and disbursed sums diverge by years in climate finance. Eg. The 100 billion dollar a year promise made for 2020 at Copenhagen in 2009 was reported as met only in 2022.
      The Fix: Attach disbursement deadlines and public tracking to each pledge, so a pledge that is not paid is visible rather than absorbed into a cumulative total.
    4. Upstream data sharing rests on no binding obligation: Early warning for glacial hazards depends on the upstream state volunteering information, and no treaty compels it. Eg. Hydrological data on the Brahmaputra reaches India through renewable memoranda of understanding, and sharing lapsed after the 2017 Doklam standoff.
      The Fix: Negotiate a Hindu Kush Himalaya data protocol with automatic sensor level transmission, so glacial lake readings do not depend on the state of bilateral relations.
    5. Regional politics undercuts regional claims: Nepal is asking India for differentiated responsibility while its recovery is being slowed by an Indian trade restriction. Eg. Power from Nepali projects built by Chinese contractors is refused entry to the Indian market.
      The Fix: Separate the power trade rules from the security screening by publishing objective eligibility criteria, so recovery generation is not blocked by contractor nationality.

    Conclusion

    Nepal’s claim will not be paid, and that was never the whole point of making it. A country responsible for a rounding error in global emissions has converted a disaster into a legal argument, and the argument lands on India rather than only on the West. The precedent it sets is that differentiated responsibility runs downward as well as upward, which is uncomfortable for every middle emitter that has used the doctrine as a shield. What to watch is the fund board’s response to an out of cycle demand, since a refusal establishes that the mechanism handles paperwork rather than emergencies.

    Back2Basics: Common But Differentiated Responsibilities

    1. What the principle holds: All states share responsibility for protecting the global environment, and their obligations differ according to their historical contribution to the problem and their present capacity to act.
    2. Where it is written: It appears as Principle 7 of the 1992 Rio Declaration and in Article 3.1 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 1992.
    3. How it was first operationalised: The Kyoto Protocol, 1997 split countries into Annex I parties carrying binding emission targets and non Annex I parties carrying none.
    4. How the Paris Agreement restated it: The 2015 text retains the principle “in the light of different national circumstances”, replacing the fixed two group split with nationally determined contributions.

    “[2017, GS3, 15 marks] ‘Climate Change’ is a global problem. How India will be affected by climate change? How Himalayan and coastal states of India will be affected by climate change?

  • Blaming climate change for extreme weather has limits

    Why in the News

    World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international research group that assesses the influence of climate change on extreme weather, has found that this year’s intense South Asian heatwave was made about three times likelier and up to 1 degree C warmer by climate change. The finding rests on extreme event attribution, a method that reruns climate models for a world without human emissions and reads the difference. Specialists have questioned how far that method can be pushed. The confidence it delivers for a multi-day heatwave collapses for a one hour cloudburst, and claims of legal liability for emissions rest on the stronger reading.

    How does extreme event attribution work?

    1. What it sets out to do: It traces the human fingerprint in a specific extreme weather event rather than in the climate record as a whole.
    2. Detection comes first: Detection establishes whether an event falls outside the range of its normal occurrence given natural variation in the climate system.
    3. The counterfactual run: Climate models are simulated first for a pre-industrial world with carbon dioxide at 280 parts per million (ppm), then for present day conditions above 420 ppm.
    4. Attribution reads the gap: The difference in the magnitude or the likelihood of the event between the two runs is assigned to human influence, and many simulations with rigorous statistical tests are required to rule out chance.

    Why is confidence higher for heatwaves than for local downpours?

    1. Long events sit inside model resolution: A day-long heatwave or several days of heavy rain unfolds slowly enough for a global climate model to represent it.
    2. Short bursts do not: Intense bursts of rain lasting an hour or so are harder to model and to link to climate change, because most global climate models cannot capture fast-changing processes.
    3. The resolution gap is documented: The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that local phenomena such as land-sea breezes and mountain wind systems can only be realistically represented at a simulation resolution of around 10 km or less, which current models do not support.

    What data and computing limits hold the science back?

    1. The observational record is too short: Analysis of localised events is hampered by limited long-term weather records.
    2. Natural variability cannot be bounded without them: Without long-term hourly or sub-hourly rainfall observations for a particular place, the range of natural variability for a heavy rainfall event there cannot be marked out with confidence.
    3. Computing power is the second constraint: Insufficient computing power restricts how finely and how often localised events can be simulated.
    4. The consequence is overreach: Uncertainties arising from observations and from models lead to unscientific claims and sweeping generalisations.

    Why can scientists not agree on what counts as extreme?

    1. The baseline decides the verdict: An event that appears extreme against a 10 to 20 year timeline may not look exceptional when analysed against a dataset spanning 500 years.
    2. Long reconstructions change the picture: A reconstruction of droughts over roughly 1,200 years found that some kinds of drought seen in the past no longer occur at all.
    3. No agreed threshold exists: Scientists are not agreed on what amounts to extreme, so the same event can be classified differently by two competent groups.

    How strong is the scientific objection to single event attribution?

    1. The possibility itself is contested: At a 2025 committee hearing at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), a Stanford University climate scientist questioned whether single event attribution is even possible at all from a scientific point of view.
    2. The counterfactual cannot be validated: A former United Nations and United Kingdom government scientist has asked how it can be known that a climate model accurately represents a climate no one has ever observed.
    3. The difficulty is conceded by the panel: NASEM experts have previously noted that it is challenging to ascertain the influence of climate change on extreme weather.
    4. Extremes predate emissions: Extreme weather events can occur even without anthropogenic climate change, so the presence of an extreme is not itself evidence of a human cause.

    What rides on the answer, and what is the alternative?

    1. The liability is pursued at two levels: Claims are brought both against countries and against individual corporations, which are two different evidentiary burdens.
    2. The carbon majors claim: Studies claim that carbon majors, meaning businesses with particularly high emissions, can be defined and that specific climate changes can be attributed to specific organisations.
    3. The court is the real test: The open question is whether such findings hold up in court, and climate models will never be perfect enough for counterfactual worlds to be accepted without challenge.
    4. The competing priority: Developing more effective early warning systems and adaptation infrastructure saves more lives than establishing who is responsible.

    Conclusion

    Extreme event attribution is strongest exactly where it is least contested, on slow, large scale events such as heatwaves, and weakest on the short, localised events that cause most sudden loss of life. That asymmetry matters because liability claims are being built on the method as a whole rather than on the events it handles well. Sparse long-term records, limited computing power and an unsettled definition of extreme all remain unresolved. Until they are, preparedness through early warning and adaptation infrastructure delivers more than attribution can.

    Back2Basics: World Weather Attribution

    1. What it is: An international collaboration of climate scientists that assesses whether and how far climate change influenced a specific extreme weather event.
    2. When it began: It was set up in 2014, and is led from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.
    3. What makes it distinctive: It publishes rapid analyses within days or weeks of an event, against conventional studies that take months to years.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2020] Which one of the following statements best describes the term ‘Social Cost of Carbon’? It is a measure, in monetary value, of the (a) long-term damage done by a tonne of CO2, emissions in a given year. (b) requirement of fossil fuels for a country to provide goods and services to its citizens, (c) efforts put in by a climate refugee to adapt to live in a new place. (d) contribution of an individual person to the carbon footprint on the planet Earth. ANSWER: (a)”

  • Losing forest for trees: India is counting trees when it should be restoring forests

    Why in the News

    A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of the Green India Mission (GIM) has found that across a decade the Mission improved forest quality over only 0.11 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares, and achieved barely 4 per cent of its forest cover expansion goal. The Mission was designed as ecological restoration, and it has been displaced in practice by a sapling planting drive whose success is measured in trees planted rather than in forest restored. The India State of Forest Report 2023 records a green cover gain of 1,445 sq km, of which only 156 sq km is true forest.

    What is the Green India Mission?

    1. What it is: A national mission of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change aimed at protecting, restoring and enhancing India’s forest cover and at responding to climate change through adaptation and mitigation.
    2. Where it sits: It is one of the eight pillars of the National Action Plan on Climate Change, unveiled in 2008.
    3. Its climate function: It is the instrument through which India promised the Paris Agreement an additional carbon sink of 2.5 billion to 3 billion tonnes by 2030.
    4. Its animating idea: The objective is ecological, covering biodiversity, water, carbon sequestration and the revival of habitat, not the raising of tree numbers.
    5. Its twin physical targets: The Mission set out to increase forest and tree cover on one block of land and to improve the quality of existing forest cover on another.
    6. Its funding design: It was built to draw money and labour from other programmes rather than from its own budget line alone.

    What is the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority?

    1. What it is: The statutory authority, known as CAMPA, that manages funds collected from industry and other user agencies in return for the diversion of forest land to non forest use.
    2. What it funds: The money is channelled into afforestation, catchment treatment and habitat improvement, which is why the Green India Mission was designed to converge with it.

    What is tree cover outside recorded forests?

    1. What it is: Tree patches smaller than one hectare and trees standing outside the legally recorded forest area, counted separately from forest cover in the national forest assessment.
    2. Why the distinction matters: A plantation, an orchard or an avenue of trees adds to this category without adding to forest, so a rise in green cover can occur while forest itself stagnates.

    What is Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam?

    1. What it is: A tree plantation campaign launched in 2024, translated as A Tree in the Name of Mother, under which the government reports planting 140 crore saplings so far.
    2. Its effect on the Mission: For practical purposes it has replaced the Green India Mission as the visible face of India’s forest effort.

    What did the Comptroller and Auditor General audit find?

    1. Forest quality improvement: Against a target of improving forest quality over 1.4 million hectares, the Mission managed 0.11 million hectares, less than a tenth of the target.
    2. Forest cover expansion: On expanding forest cover the Mission achieved barely four per cent of its goal.
    3. Recorded shortfall on quality: The audit records a shortfall of about 91.87 per cent against the forest quality improvement target over ten years.
    4. Recorded shortfall on cover: The audit records a shortfall of about 97.57 per cent against the forest cover target over the same period.
    5. Coverage of the audit: The performance audit examined implementation across 16 States and Union Territories.
    6. Money actually received: Only about Rs 1,149.14 crore of budgetary support reached the Mission over the audited decade.
    7. Convergence not achieved: The Mission’s intended convergence with its partner schemes did not materialise.
    8. The overall verdict: A scheme conceived to heal India’s forests achieved almost nothing it set out to do across a decade.

    Why did the Mission’s convergence with other funding streams fail?

    1. The CAMPA channel: CAMPA holds money collected from industry for diverting forest land into afforestation, and that money did not flow into Mission activity as designed.
    2. The wage labour channel: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, rebranded VB G RAM G, funds rural wage labour that can be used for plantation and land restoration works.
    3. What convergence was meant to do: The Mission’s own budget line was small by design, so its physical targets depended on borrowing funds and labour from these two much larger streams.
    4. What happened instead: The convergence never materialised, which left the Mission with a decadal target set for one scale of resources and an actual allocation of a different scale.
    5. The consequence for accountability: A mission that does not control its own money cannot be held to its own targets, and no single agency owns the shortfall.
    6. The displacement effect: With convergence absent, the plantation drive absorbed the political attention and the reporting space that restoration was meant to occupy.

    What does the India State of Forest Report 2023 show about the quality of the gain?

    1. The headline gain: The report records a gain of 1,445 sq km in green cover.
    2. The forest share of that gain: Only 156 sq km of that gain is true forest.
    3. The remainder: The other 1,289 sq km is tree cover outside recorded forests.
    4. Inside the recorded forests: Dense canopy within recorded forest area is thinning into scrub.
    5. What the two numbers together establish: India is planting more and foresting less, so an aggregate green cover figure conceals a decline in forest quality.
    6. Why this matters for the carbon pledge: A carbon sink commitment measured in billions of tonnes rests on dense forest, not on scattered tree cover that stores far less carbon per hectare.

    Why does the Aravalli Green Wall illustrate the limits of planting?

    1. The state of the range: The Aravallis are among the country’s most degraded ranges, with hillocks quarried away over decades.
    2. The invasion: Native growth has been overrun by the invasive vilayati kikar (Prosopis juliflora), which suppresses regeneration of native species.
    3. The proposed remedy: The range is now to be rescued by a Green Wall of fresh planting.
    4. What planting cannot do, first: Fresh saplings cannot undo the damage left by years of mining and the removal of the hill itself.
    5. What planting cannot do, second: Planting does not halt encroachment on the range, which is a land use and enforcement problem.
    6. What planting cannot do, third: An ecosystem that took millennia to assemble cannot be summoned back by a plantation drive.
    7. The governing distinction: Restoration rebuilds the ecological function of a landscape, and landscaping only adds vegetation to it.

    Where does counting trees diverge from restoring forests?

    1. Two different outputs: A sapling planted is a countable annual output. A restored forest is a slow change in canopy density, species composition and soil.
    2. Two different timelines: Planting reports results within a financial year, and restoration shows results across decades, which biases the system toward planting.
    3. Two different failure modes: Plantation failure shows up as sapling mortality that is rarely audited. Restoration failure shows up in the forest report, as it has in 2023.
    4. The metric drives the money: With 140 crore saplings as the reported achievement and 0.11 million hectares as the restored area, the reporting system rewards the activity that is easiest to count.
    5. Species and structure are lost in the count: A count of trees is indifferent to whether the trees are native, whether they form a canopy, and whether they support the species the forest once held.
    6. The ecological cost of the substitution: Biodiversity, groundwater recharge and habitat revival, the Mission’s stated objectives, do not follow automatically from a higher tree count.

    What can an audit of this kind not capture?

    1. The instrument is accountancy: The audit counts hectares and rupees, and it cannot count the worth of a living forest.
    2. Ecological value is not a line item: Pollination, water regulation, soil stabilisation and habitat quality have no entry in a financial performance table.
    3. Implementation reality: The assessment cannot always capture the practical difficulties of running a mission across State forest departments with varying capacity.
    4. Time lag in forest outcomes: Restoration works undertaken late in the audit period cannot show measurable results within it.
    5. Why the verdict still stands: Even on its own limited terms, an achievement of four per cent against a cover target and a tenth of a quality target is a failure of implementation, not a measurement artefact.
    6. What the audit does establish: The mission designed to restore India’s forests was allowed to wither while the state busied itself counting trees.

    Challenges to the Green India Mission

    1. Sapling survival is not tracked: Plantation drives report numbers planted and rarely report survival after three years. e.g. successive State plantation drives reporting crore scale planting with no published third year survival audit.
    2. Monoculture and exotic species: Plantations favour fast growing and commercially useful species over native mixed forest, which limits habitat value. e.g. eucalyptus and acacia blocks raised on degraded common land in Karnataka and Gujarat.
    3. Land availability for restoration: The Mission needs degraded forest land free of competing claims, and much of it carries grazing, cultivation and settlement use. e.g. contested village common land in the Aravalli belt of Haryana and Rajasthan.
    4. Forest rights not settled first: Restoration works on land where individual and community claims under forest rights law remain undecided create conflict with forest dwellers. e.g. pending community forest resource claims across central Indian districts.
    5. Invasive species suppress regeneration: Restoration on invaded land fails unless the invasive is removed first, which is costlier than planting. e.g. Prosopis juliflora in the Aravallis and Lantana camara across central Indian forests.
    6. Weak convergence architecture: The Mission depends on funds controlled by other schemes with their own targets and reporting cycles. e.g. CAMPA balances lying unspent with State authorities while Mission works waited for money.
    7. Staffing and capacity in forest departments: Frontline forest staff vacancies limit the supervision that assisted natural regeneration requires. e.g. large vacancy levels in forest guard and forester posts reported by several State forest departments.
    8. Diversion continues alongside restoration: Forest land continues to be diverted for infrastructure while restoration targets are missed, so the net position worsens. e.g. compensatory afforestation for the Ken Betwa link inside the Panna landscape.
    9. Green cover accounting conflates categories: Counting orchards, plantations and avenue trees within green cover masks the loss of dense natural forest. e.g. the 1,289 sq km of tree cover outside recorded forests in the 2023 assessment.

    Conclusion

    India has substituted a countable output, saplings planted, for the objective it actually set itself, which is restored forest, and the audit records the cost of that substitution across a decade. The Green India Mission failed not because restoration is unachievable but because it was starved of money, denied the convergence it was designed around, and displaced by a drive that reports faster numbers. Until forest quality, canopy density and sapling survival replace planting counts as the reported metric, the Paris carbon sink commitment will rest on an inflated green cover figure. The instrument exists and the finance does not follow it.

    Forest Cover and Restoration in India

    1. What forest cover means: All land more than one hectare in area with a tree canopy density of more than 10 per cent, irrespective of ownership or legal status.
    2. The assessment: The Forest Survey of India, Dehradun, publishes the India State of Forest Report every two years using satellite data and field inventory.
    3. The national scale: Total forest and tree cover is about 8,27,357 sq km, which is about 25.17 per cent of the geographical area, per the 2023 assessment.
    4. The split: Forest cover is about 7,15,343 sq km, or 21.76 per cent, and tree cover about 1,12,014 sq km, or 3.41 per cent.
    5. The policy target: The National Forest Policy, 1988 sets a goal of 33 per cent of the geographical area under forest and tree cover.
    6. The canopy classes: Forest cover is classed as very dense forest, moderately dense forest and open forest, by canopy density bands.
    7. The international commitment: India has committed to restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, a pledge raised from an earlier 21 million hectare commitment under the Bonn Challenge.
    8. The climate commitment: India’s nationally determined contribution promises an additional carbon sink of 2.5 billion to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
    9. Why restoration differs from afforestation: Restoration rebuilds a degraded ecosystem’s native composition and function, and afforestation only establishes trees on land, often with a single species.

    Constitutional Framework Governing Forests and the Environment

    1. Article 48A: Directs the State to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country.
    2. Article 51A(g): Places a fundamental duty on every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife.
    3. Article 21: Protects life and personal liberty, read by the courts to include the right to a clean and healthy environment.
    4. Seventh Schedule, Concurrent List Entry 17A: Places forests on the Concurrent List after the 42nd Constitutional Amendment, 1976.
    5. Seventh Schedule, Concurrent List Entry 17B: Places protection of wild animals and birds on the Concurrent List.
    6. Article 253: Empowers Parliament to legislate to implement international agreements, the basis for environmental laws giving effect to treaty commitments.
    7. Article 244 and the Fifth Schedule: Provide for administration of Scheduled Areas, which overlap substantially with India’s forest landscapes.
    8. Article 243ZD and Part IX: Place village level planning with Panchayats, the base for Gram Sabha consultation in forest areas.

    Laws and Rules Governing Forests and Compensatory Afforestation

    1. Indian Forest Act, 1927: Consolidates the law on forests, the transit of forest produce and the duty leviable on it, and provides for reserved, protected and village forests.
    2. Key feature: It creates the categories of legally recorded forest against which forest cover is measured.
    3. Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980: Requires prior approval of the Union government for the diversion of forest land to non forest use.
    4. 2023 amendment: Renamed the Act the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980 and exempted specified categories of land and projects from prior approval.
    5. Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016: Establishes the National and State Compensatory Afforestation Funds and the authorities that manage them.
    6. Rules, 2018: Set out the procedure for utilisation of the accumulated fund for afforestation, catchment treatment and wildlife management.
    7. Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006: Recognises individual and community forest rights and requires Gram Sabha consent for diversion.
    8. Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Governs protected areas, and restricts activities inside national parks, sanctuaries, conservation reserves and tiger reserves.
    9. Environment (Protection) Act, 1986: The umbrella law under which environmental clearance, eco sensitive zone notifications and emission standards are issued.
    10. National Green Tribunal Act, 2010: Creates a specialised tribunal for environmental disputes, including challenges to forest diversion and afforestation failures.
    11. Biological Diversity Act, 2002: Provides for conservation of biological diversity and the constitution of biodiversity management committees at the local level.

    “[2016] Which of the following best describes/ describe the aim of ‘Green India Mission’ of the Government of India?
    1. Incorporating environmental benefits and costs into the Union and State Budgets thereby implementing the ‘green accounting’
    2. Launching the second green revolution to enhance agricultural output so as to ensure food security to one and all in the future
    3. Restoring and enhancing forest cover and responding to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures
    Select the correct answer using the code given below.
    (a) 1 only
    (b) 2 and 3 only
    (c) 3 only
    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • India’s Green Mission in Trouble? CAG Flags Major Lapses

    Why in the News

    A Comptroller and Auditor General audit of the Green India Mission across 16 states and union territories found a 91.87 per cent shortfall against its forest quality improvement target and a 97.57 per cent shortfall against its forest cover target over ten years. The mission received Rs 1,149.14 crore, or 47.88 per cent, of the budgetary support it was to get. The tension is between a mission carrying India’s forest carbon sink commitment and a funding and convergence design that never materialised.

    What is the Green India Mission?

    1. About: The Green India Mission is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, launched in 2014 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
    2. Twin targets: Increasing forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares, and improving the quality of forest cover on another 5 million hectares.
    3. Design principle: The mission was to work through convergence with existing schemes rather than through a large standalone budget.
    4. Climate function: It carries the forestry component of India’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement.

    What did the audit find on physical targets?

    1. Quality improvement: Forest cover quality improved on only 0.11384 million hectares against a 1.4 million hectare target, a shortfall of 91.87 per cent.
    2. Cover increase: Forest cover increased on only 0.03409 million hectares against a 1.4 million hectare target, a shortfall of 97.57 per cent.
    3. Audit period: The audit covered 2015-16 to 2024-25 across 16 states and union territories.
    4. Accounting failure: Eight states and union territories did not maintain annual accounts for the mission.

    Why did the funding architecture fail?

    1. Proposed requirement: The mission’s proposed funding requirement was Rs 40,600 crore.
    2. What was approved: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved Rs 2,000 crore for the first four years, alongside Rs 400 crore from Thirteenth Finance Commission grants.
    3. What was received: Only Rs 1,149.14 crore, or 47.88 per cent of even that reduced budgetary support, reached the mission over ten years.
    4. Structural consequence: A mission funded at under 3 per cent of its assessed requirement could not deliver targets set against the full requirement.

    Why did convergence not happen?

    1. Intended partners: Convergence was planned with the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Nagar Van Yojana and the School Nursery Yojana.
    2. What the audit found: These schemes operated in silos, and convergence was not achieved.
    3. Design dependence: The mission’s low budget was justified on the assumption that convergence would supply the resources, so the failure of convergence removed the funding basis entirely.
    4. Accountability gap: No single authority was answerable for delivering convergence across ministries.

    What does this mean for India’s climate commitment?

    1. The commitment: India’s Nationally Determined Contribution includes creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 through additional forest and tree cover.
    2. Delivery vehicle: The Green India Mission is the principal instrument for the forestry component of that commitment.
    3. Arithmetic problem: Cover added on 0.03409 million hectares cannot support a sink target premised on 5 million hectares.
    4. Reporting risk: The gap between the reported forest cover figures and the audited mission achievement raises a measurement question about what counts as forest cover.

    Challenges to India’s afforestation programmes

    1. Plantation survival rates: Trees planted are counted, trees surviving are not. e.g. audits repeatedly finding low survival in compensatory afforestation plantations.
    2. Monoculture plantation: Fast growing single species plantations raise canopy cover without restoring biodiversity. e.g. eucalyptus and acacia plantations counted as forest cover gains.
    3. Definition of forest cover: The forest survey definition counts any land above one hectare with over 10 per cent canopy, including plantations and orchards. e.g. commercial plantations appearing as forest cover increases.
    4. Compensatory afforestation land shortage: States lack non forest land of the required extent to compensate diversion. e.g. the accumulation of unspent Compensatory Afforestation Fund balances before the 2016 Act.
    5. Community rights friction: Plantation on land under claim conflicts with recognised forest rights. e.g. disputes over plantation drives on land claimed under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
    6. Convergence without an owner: Cross ministry convergence has no accountable authority. e.g. the Green India Mission’s four named partner schemes operating in silos through the audit period.

    Conclusion

    The mission failed because its target was set against an assessed requirement of Rs 40,600 crore while its funding was built on a convergence assumption that no authority was made accountable for delivering. The shortfall is therefore a design failure rather than an implementation lapse. The next milestone is whether the government restructures the mission’s funding or restates the forestry component of the Nationally Determined Contribution.

    Back2Basics: National Action Plan on Climate Change

    1. Launched in 2008 to outline India’s strategy on climate adaptation and mitigation.
    2. Comprises eight national missions: Solar, Enhanced Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Habitat, Water, Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, Green India, Sustainable Agriculture, and Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change.
    3. Coordinated by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change.
    4. States prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change aligned to the national missions.
    5. The Green India Mission was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in 2014 with a mandate covering 10 million hectares in total.

    Government Initiatives

    1. Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016: Governs the use of funds collected for forest land diversion, with a national authority and state authorities managing the corpus.
    2. Nagar Van Yojana: Supports the creation of urban forests on forest or other land within municipal limits, targeting city residents and local bodies.
    3. National Mission for a Green India: Targets 5 million hectares of new cover and 5 million hectares of quality improvement.
    4. Mission LiFE: Promotes individual and community behaviour change on sustainable consumption.
    5. School Nursery Yojana: Engages schools in raising seedlings to build a nursery base and environmental awareness.

    Way Forward

    1. Fund the mission against its assessed requirement: Close the gap between the Rs 40,600 crore requirement and the Rs 1,149.14 crore released, or restate the targets.
    2. Appoint an accountable convergence authority: Name one authority answerable for delivering convergence across the four partner schemes.
    3. Report survival, not planting: Measure achievement through third party verified survival after three years, not through saplings planted.
    4. Separate plantation from natural forest in reporting: Report plantation area distinctly from natural forest cover so the carbon sink claim is verifiable.
    5. Enforce annual accounts: Make release of the next instalment conditional on maintained annual accounts, since eight states did not maintain them.

    “[2016] Which of the following best describes/ describe the aim of ‘Green India Mission’ of the Government of India?

    1. Incorporating environmental benefits and costs into the Union and State Budgets thereby implementing the ‘green accounting’

    2. Launching the second green revolution to enhance agricultural output so as to ensure food security to one and all in the future

    3. Restoring and enhancing forest cover and responding to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures

    Select the correct answer using the code given below.

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 and 3 only

    (c) 3 only

    (d) 1, 2 and 3

  • New study finds global warming is accelerating, with the 1.5 degree Celsius breach projected by 2030

    Why in the News

    A study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reports evidence that global warming is accelerating, not merely continuing. After removing natural noise from five temperature datasets, the authors find the last decade warmed faster than any previous decade on record, and project the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold being breached by 2030.

    What is the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold?

    1. Paris target: Under the Paris Agreement, 2015, countries agreed to hold warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
    2. Why 1.5 matters: Beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, risks of extreme heat, sea level rise, and ecosystem collapse rise sharply, making it the central guardrail of climate policy.

    What are aerosols and the masking effect?

    1. Aerosols: Aerosols are tiny particles from sources such as burning fossil fuels that reflect sunlight and exert a cooling effect on the atmosphere.
    2. How cooling works: Light-colored particles bounce sunlight back into space and help make clouds brighter, which lowers temperatures.
    3. The cooling mask: This pollution has acted like an invisible shield, hiding a portion of the total heat trapped by greenhouse gases
    4. Unmasking: As pollution controls cut aerosols, their cooling effect fades and the full warming from greenhouse gases is felt, an effect the study describes as a disappearing cooling mask.

    Why is measuring acceleration difficult?

    1. Noisy temperatures: Global temperatures fluctuate year to year because of natural factors like volcanic eruptions and changes in solar activity. (Volcano noise includes the seismic vibrations, audible sounds, and infrasound produced by subsurface magma movement, degassing, and eruptions. Solar noise refers to intense bursts of radio waves and energetic emissions naturally broadcast by the Sun.)
    2. Masked trend: These events can temporarily hide the underlying human caused warming, making it hard to prove the rate itself is rising.

    How did the study establish acceleration?

    1. Multiple datasets: The authors analysed five major global temperature datasets to avoid relying on any single record.
    2. Statistical subtraction: They used statistical methods to remove the influence of volcanic and solar noise, isolating the human driven trend.
    3. High confidence: After removing the noise, they were more than 98% certain the jump in warming rate was real rather than a short lived fluctuation, dating the change to around 2015.
    4. Timing: This change or acceleration in the rate of warming was identified to have begun around
      2015 .

    Why does the faster pace matter?

    1. Shrinking timeline: Under the earlier, slower rate, the world expected more time before breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the accelerated pace brings the breach forward to 2030.
    2. Twin drivers: Greenhouse gas emissions remain the primary cause, while falling aerosol pollution adds to the acceleration.

    What are the challenges to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius?

    1. Continued emissions growth: Global carbon dioxide emissions remain near record highs, driven by fossil fuel use in power, industry, and transport.
    2. Aerosol paradox: Cutting air pollution saves lives but removes a cooling effect, accelerating near term warming.
    3. Shrinking carbon budget: The remaining budget consistent with 1.5 degrees Celsius is small and shrinks with every year of high emissions.
    4. Slow energy transition: Renewable growth has not yet displaced fossil fuels fast enough to cut absolute emissions.
    5. Feedback loops: Melting ice, thawing permafrost, and forest loss release additional carbon and reduce reflectivity, reinforcing warming.
    6. Finance and equity gaps: Developing countries lack the finance and technology transfer needed to decarbonise while meeting development needs.

    Conclusion

    The study reframes the problem from steady warming to an accelerating one, advancing the likely 1.5 degree Celsius breach to 2030. The central unresolved issue is that cleaning the air removes a cooling shield, so only deep and sustained cuts in greenhouse gases can slow the pace.

    Back2Basics:

    Paris Agreement

    1. Adopted: 2015 at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), entering into force in 2016.
    2. Convening body: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
    3. Core goal: Limit warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, pursuing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels.
    4. Mechanism: Nationally Determined Contributions, updated every five years, with a global stocktake to assess collective progress.

    PYQ Relevance

    [UPSC 2022] Discuss global warming and mention its effects on the global climate. Explain the control measures to bring down the level of greenhouse gases which cause global warming, in the light of the Kyoto Protocol, 1997.

    Linkage: The question examines the causes, impacts and mitigation of global warming through international climate frameworks. The article adds recent evidence that global warming is accelerating, highlighting the need for faster emission cuts to achieve Paris Agreement goals.

  • Climate whiplash, fire clouds: factors fuelling Europe’s wildfires

    Why in the News?

    Severe wildfires have swept across Greece, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, driven by climate whiplash, pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds, and prolonged heatwaves, highlighting the growing impact of climate change.

    Key Concepts

    Climate Whiplash

    • Rapid shift between extreme wet and dry conditions.
    • Wet periods promote vegetation growth, while subsequent heatwaves dry it into highly flammable fuel.

    Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) Clouds

    • Fire-generated thunderstorm clouds formed by intense wildfire heat.
    • Can reach the stratosphere, generate lightning and strong winds, creating new fires.

    Sixth-Generation Wildfires

    • Extremely intense wildfires driven by heatwaves and prolonged drought.
    • Difficult to control using conventional firefighting methods.

    Why are Europe’s Wildfires Becoming More Severe?

    • Climate whiplash increases fuel availability.
    • PyroCb clouds spread fires through lightning and erratic winds.
    • Rural land abandonment has increased combustible vegetation.
    • Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts intensify fire conditions.

    Impacts

    • Loss of lives, forests and biodiversity.
    • Declining air quality across large regions.
    • Increased carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, accelerating climate change.
    • Annual economic losses of about €2.5 billion in the European Union (EU).

    [2026] Consider the following statements with reference to India’s response to climate change:

    I. India’s LT-LEDS is a crucial tool for achieving net-zero emissions by 2070.

    II. India’s BUR-4 (Dec 2024) recorded ~8% decrease in GHG emissions in 2020 over 2019.

    III. Climate-resilient development necessarily depends on quick and short-term achievement of emission reduction targets.

    Which of the following relationships is/are correct?

    1. Statement I is empirically supported by statement II

    2. Statement III contradicts the approach implicit in statement I

    3. Statement I and statement III together establish the premise of long-term sustainability

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 1 and 2

    (c) 2 and 3

    (d) 3 only

  • Will El Niño Weaken India’s Economy

    Why in the News?

    India’s monsoon has opened with a 40% rainfall deficit in June, and the India Meteorological Department has forecast a second consecutive below-normal month in July. The forecast has revived concern that a potential “super” El Niño could damage agricultural output, rural income, and food prices. India enters this season on the back of record 2024-25 foodgrain output, which is what a poor monsoon now puts at risk.

    How does a weak monsoon transmit into the broader economy beyond agriculture?

    1. Three transmission channels: A weak monsoon damages the economy through lower agricultural output, reduced rural income, and rising food prices.
    2. Cropping pattern shift: Farmers are shifting toward pulses and away from maize and vegetables. Pulses need less water and cost less to cultivate.
    3. Irrigation-linked decision-making: Planting decisions also depend on irrigation access, MSP levels, procurement support, and market conditions.
    4. Rural non-farm contraction: Non-traded rural services such as construction contract when agricultural income falls.
    5. Early economic signals: Two-wheeler and tractor sales weaken first. Real estate demand in smaller towns and cities follows.
    6. Export exposure: Agriculture exports grew at a CAGR of 8.2% between fiscals 2020 and 2025, contributing 12% of India’s core exports. A weak kharif season threatens this growth.

    Why does a weak monsoon strain macro-fiscal and external balances even before the shortfall materialises?

    1. Fertiliser subsidy commitment: The Union Cabinet approved a ₹41,533 crore Nutrient-Based Subsidy (NBS: a fixed per-nutrient, rather than per-product, fertiliser subsidy) for phosphatic and potassic fertilisers for the kharif season, covering 28 grades.
    2. Import and buffer-stock risk: A shortfall in kharif output will force the government to release buffer stocks and import commodities. This widens the Current Account Deficit (CAD: the gap between a country’s foreign exchange outflows and inflows on the current account) and pressures the rupee.
    3. Compounding supply shock: Pest pressure and fertiliser input constraints linked to the Iran conflict are adding to cost pressure ahead of the monsoon outcome.
    4. Growth cost estimate: A combined El Niño-plus-drought scenario may shave 20 to 65 basis points off GDP growth, according to Kotak Mutual Fund.
    5. RBI’s growth-inflation warning: The Reserve Bank of India’s June bulletin flagged that an adverse south-west monsoon could weigh on the domestic growth-inflation outlook.

    Why did the 2009 and 2015 El Niño years produce such different economic outcomes despite similar monsoon failure?

    1. El Niño as an imperfect predictor: Six of the eleven below-normal or deficient monsoon years since 2000 were classified as El Niño years by the IMD. Five of these six saw deficient rainfall.
    2. 2009-10 outcome: Two consecutive years of rainfall stress, combined with all-India irrigation cover below 45%, contracted crop GVA (Gross Value Added: a sector’s contribution to national output, net of input costs) by 2.5% and 3.2% in fiscals 2009 and 2010. Inflation entered double digits.
    3. 2014-15 output impact: El Niño intensified from weak to strong across these two years. Crop GVA contracted again in both years.
    4. 2014-15 price impact: Food inflation stayed muted in 2015. This differed sharply from the double-digit inflation of 2009-10.
    5. Explanation for the divergence: Proactive food management, restrained MSP hikes, and a global commodity price slump kept 2015 inflation low.
    6. What the comparison establishes: Policy response, not rainfall severity alone, determines whether an El Niño year turns into an inflation crisis.

    How exposed is India’s irrigation and storage system to a second successive weak monsoon?

    1. Vulnerable districts: 315 districts have been flagged as vulnerable to a poor monsoon. Of these, 111 districts across 12 States are of primary concern for poor irrigation facilities.
    2. Reservoir storage shortfall: Storage across the 166 reservoirs monitored by the Central Water Commission stood at 47.725 BCM (Billion Cubic Metres) on July 2. This is below both the year-ago level of 78.077 BCM and the normal level of 48.402 BCM for this time of year.
    3. Current buffer, limited margin: The present storage position can meet requirements. A second consecutive weak monsoon would strain it.
    4. Structural irrigation gap: All-India average irrigation cover remains below 45%, the same constraint that contributed to the 2009-10 GVA contraction.

    Should India replace crop insurance with ex-ante risk reduction as its primary drought response?

    1. Limits of crop insurance: Crop insurance compensates farmers after a monsoon failure. It does not reduce their underlying exposure to rainfall variability.
    2. Ex-ante alternative: Ex-ante risk reduction requires sustained public investment in irrigation infrastructure rather than compensation after the event.
    3. Seed access gap: Drought-resistant, high-yielding seed varieties are necessary. Farmers who need them most lack access to them.
    4. Investment shortfall: Public investment in irrigation and seed access has been inadequate. This explains why agricultural disaster preparedness remains poor.

    Conclusion

    A weak monsoon does not automatically translate into an economic crisis. The 2009 and 2015 El Niño years show that policy response, not rainfall alone, determines the scale of the damage. India’s current toolkit remains weighted toward reactive measures, crop insurance, buffer stock release, price management, rather than ex-ante investment in irrigation and drought-resistant seed. Until public investment shifts from compensating farmers after a bad monsoon to reducing their exposure to it, each El Niño year will continue to test the same vulnerabilities: rainfed districts, thin irrigation cover, and reservoirs running below normal.

    PYQ Relevance

    [UPSC 2023] Discuss the consequences of climate change on the food security in tropical countries.

    Linkage: The PYQ assesses the relationship between climate variability, agriculture and food security. El Niño-induced rainfall deficits directly threaten crop production, food security, rural livelihoods and agricultural sustainability, making this PYQ conceptually relevant.

  • Salt Marsh Restoration on Oléron Island

    Why in News?

    The revival of the traditional salt harvesting profession on Oléron Island, France, is gaining attention as restored salt marshes help protect coastal areas from the increasing impacts of climate change, especially marine flooding.

    Key Highlights

    • The profession of salt worker disappeared from Oléron Island in the 1980s but has been revived with support from local authorities.
    • Salt marshes are being restored not only for salt production but also as a nature-based solution for climate adaptation.
    • These marshes act as buffer zones, reducing the impact of coastal flooding and storm surges.
    • Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of marine flooding, making coastal ecosystem restoration increasingly important.

    What are Salt Marshes?

    • Salt marshes are coastal wetlands found in the intertidal zone between land and sea.
    • They are regularly flooded by seawater during high tides.
    • They are dominated by salt-tolerant (halophytic) vegetation such as grasses, sedges, and shrubs.
    • Salt marshes commonly occur in estuaries, lagoons, deltas, and sheltered coastlines.

    Ecological Importance

    • Act as natural buffers, reducing the impact of storm surges and coastal erosion.
    • Absorb and store excess floodwater, lowering flood risks.
    • Trap sediments and improve water quality.
    • Serve as breeding and nursery grounds for fish, crustaceans, and migratory birds.
    • Store large amounts of blue carbon, helping mitigate climate change.

    What is Blue Carbon?

    • Blue carbon refers to carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems such as: Mangroves, Salt marshes, and Seagrass meadows
    • These ecosystems sequester carbon in both vegetation and underlying sediments for long periods.

    Threats to Salt Marshes

    • Coastal development and land reclamation.
    • Sea level rise due to climate change.
    • Pollution and eutrophication.
    • Conversion for agriculture and aquaculture.
    • Alteration of natural tidal flows.

    Relevance for India

    • India has significant coastal wetlands, including mangroves, salt marshes, mudflats, and seagrass meadows, which play a crucial role in coastal protection and climate resilience.
    • Restoration of these ecosystems supports India’s commitments under the Ramsar Convention, National Coastal Mission, and climate adaptation strategies.

    [2021] What is blue carbon?

    [A] Carbon captured by oceans and coastal ecosystems

    [B] Carbon sequestered in forest biomass and agricultural soils

    [C] Carbon contained in petroleum and natural gas

    [D] Carbon present in atmosphere

  • Behind Europe’s heatwave, cliamte change the culprit

    Why in the News?

    A World Weather Attribution (WWA) study has confirmed climate change as the unequivocal cause of the ongoing European heatwave, which has broken or is forecast to break historic heat-stress records in 45% of 854 cities analysed. The finding sharpens a wider gap between the certainty climate science now offers and the declining political priority accorded to climate action.

    What does the WWA study establish about the causal role of climate change in the current heatwave?

    1. Unequivocal attribution: WWA found climate change, not the El Niño phenomenon or any other factor, responsible for the European heatwave.
    2. Recurrence pattern: This is the third severe heatwave to grip Europe in five years, after 2022 and 2023.
    3. Mortality scale: More than 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded since 21 June; over 1,00,000 people are estimated to have died from extreme heat across 2022 and 2023.
    4. Probability shift: Record-breaking night-time highs are nearly 100 times more likely now than in 2003; daytime peak temperatures are nearly 10 times more likely.
    5. Historical baseline broken: Temperature records being broken were set in 1976; the current daytime and overnight highs would have been virtually impossible to occur as recently as 1976.
    6. ENSO ruled out: The El Niño Southern Oscillation phase played no role in driving the heat during this spell.

    Why has climate attribution science become central to fixing responsibility for extreme weather events?

    1. Definition: Climate attribution is the scientific discipline that determines how much human-caused global warming influences the probability and intensity of specific extreme weather events. It quantifies how much worse or more likely a particular flood, heatwave, or drought has become compared to a hypothetical world without human-driven emissions
    2. Function: Attribution science tests the likelihood of a specific extreme weather event occurring if climate change were not taking place.
    3. Recency: The discipline has developed only over the last two decades.
    4. Speed gain: Assessments earlier took months or years; WWA’s methods now produce findings within days, even while an event is still ongoing.
    5. Purpose: The science removes ambiguity and fixes the exact extent of climate change’s responsibility for an event.
    6. Scientific caution without it: Scientists are otherwise wary of linking any individual extreme weather event to climate change without a dedicated attribution study.
    7. Policy intent: Beyond generating evidence, attribution studies are designed to force policymakers to act faster on climate change.

    Does scientific certainty on climate attribution translate into proportionate political action?

    1. Evidence-action gap: Scientific evidence on climate change is already voluminous and compelling, yet climate change has dropped down the list of global priorities.
    2. Political trigger: The decline has sharpened particularly after Donald Trump took office as US President.
    3. Forum evidence: Recent G7 meetings have carried little or no climate-related agenda or outcomes.
    4. Reversal of salience: Climate change was earlier among the most prominent items at international meetings involving influential leaders; this prominence has receded.
    5. Target abandonment: Scientists maintain the Paris Agreement targets of containing global temperature rise within 1.5°C to 2°C remain achievable, but governments treat them as effectively out of reach.
    6. Reframing of feasibility: Governments are treating the required resource mobilisation as politically impractical rather than scientifically unattainable.

    What risk does the global shift from mitigation to adaptation pose?

    1. Strategic shift: Countries are increasingly choosing to let climate change play out and to adapt to its impacts rather than prevent it.
    2. Scientific objection: Scientists routinely warn against adaptation as a substitute for mitigation.
    3. Inherent limits: Adaptation has limits beyond which impacts cannot be absorbed.
    4. Trend trajectory: Events such as the European heatwave are projected to increase in both frequency and intensity over coming years.
    5. Displacement, not resolution: The shift to adaptation transfers the climate risk from prevention to adaptation capacity rather than resolving it.

    Conclusion

    Climate attribution science has removed the scientific ambiguity once used to avoid linking individual extreme weather events to climate change. The European heatwave attribution exposes a widening gap between scientific certainty and political will, as global climate governance deprioritises mitigation. Countries are substituting adaptation for prevention despite scientists’ warnings that adaptation carries inherent limits. Closing this evidence-action gap is now central to achieving the Paris Agreement targets.

    PYQ Relevance

    [UPSC 2017] ‘Climate Change’ is a global problem. How India will be affected by climate change? How Himalayan and coastal states of India will be affected by climate change?

    Linkage: The PYQ xamines the impacts of climate change and the need for mitigation and adaptation strategies. The article uses the European heatwave as scientific evidence that climate change is intensifying extreme weather events and highlights the growing gap between climate science and political action.

  • ‘Climate Change’ is a global problem. How India will be affected by climate change? How Himalayan and coastal states of India will be affected by climate change?