M Rajshekhar
CarbonCopy contributor.
The Great LPG Divide: India’s LPG Cylinder Market Splits in Two
As the Iran war disrupts global supplies, registered consumers remain protected while migrant workers and poorer households pay some of the highest rates anywhere in the world for LPG
West Asia escalation can put India’s energy security to the test
As the attack by America and Israel on Iran enters its third day, the world is torn between incomprehension and comprehension. What happens next in the war theatre is anyone’s guess. How long will the battle last? Can Iran inflict enough damage for the US and Israel to withdraw?
Climate action in a fractured world: Trends for 2026
On January 13, US President Donald Trump slapped a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran. The news was received with consternation in Iran and beyond. Oil is Teheran’s biggest export — with China accounting for 80% of Iran’s petroleum exports. If the middle kingdom fell in line with
Can green trade barriers save the environment?
Oil palm is hard to miss in Malaysia. Its plantations are visible along the highway between Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Kuala Lumpur itself. A few days later, when CarbonCopy travelled to the eastern province of Sabah in Borneo, oil palm was omnipresent there as well. Flying over Sabah’s forested interior, we saw large geometric patches, each a much lighter shade of
What India risks as its natural forests disappear
India’s largest national security question is going unasked. Going by the reports put out by Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI), the country’s adding forests. The country’s forest cover, says FSI, have grown from 642,401 square kilometres in 1987 to 715,342.61 square kilometres in 2023
As COP30 rolls out a tropical forest fund, how are India’s natural forests doing?
A conflict of interest has dominated India’s forest cover estimates for a long time. While the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) oversees the country’s forests, Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI) monitors their extent and condition. The FSI, however, is not an independent watchdog. It reports to the MoEFCC.
How much Khair is India left with?
The second part of this series on the health of India’s native forests looked at the Khair trade in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The tree, whose heartwood is in great demand by the chewing tobacco industry, has vanished from most of the state. All the consequences of timber trafficking — habitat destruction
How India’s Pan Masala Boom is Stripping Its Forests
In the second part of CarbonCopy’s series on India’s native forests, we trace the illicit felling of Khair trees in Uttar Pradesh’s Suhelwa Wildlife Sanctuary, and how a lucrative kattha trade, weak institutions, and complicit officials are pushing this forest, and others like it, towards collapse
India’s Forests Are Shrinking in Plain Sight
As August sloshed to an end, the people of Chamba badly needed respite — and reassurance. It wasn’t to be. In that last week, rainfall, abnormally high all month, added further intensity. Dumping four times more rain than normal, it would leave Himachal Pradesh with the wettest August in 76 years.
