With over 70 percent of global emissions tied to cities, the new BRICS Urban Mobility Hub and Voluntary Principles for Climate-Resilient Urban Infrastructure aim to help fast-growing Global South cities electrify transit and flood-proof their infrastructure together. Key Takeaways Cities Are Where the Climate Fight Is Actually Won or Lost More than 70 percent of…
An evidence-based briefing on ice-rock avalanches, permafrost degradation, and compound hazard chains in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. I. Introduction: A Paradigm Shift in Himalayan Hazard Science For three decades, the dominant mental model of Himalayan disaster risk has centred on one image: a glacial lake, swollen by decades of ice melt, bursting through its earthen…
Long before the words ‘regenerative agriculture’ or ‘agroecology’ entered a single sustainability report, Indigenous communities across the Amazon, the Andes, the Pacific Northwest, the Himalayas, and the Australian outback were already farming in ways that healed soil, conserved water, and worked with – rather than against – natural ecosystems. Today, as industrial agriculture buckles under…
1. Introduction 1.1 The Hydropower Expansion Boom in Nepal’s Glaciated Basins Nepal has staked its economic future on hydropower. With an estimated theoretical potential exceeding 80,000 MW drawn from its snow- and glacier-fed rivers, the country has spent the past decade racing to build run-of-river (RoR) plants along the Trishuli, Bhote Koshi, Tama Koshi, and…
Lessons from the Ganges Basin A researched look at 9,000 years of agricultural innovation on the Gangetic plain – from wild-rice gathering at Lahuradewa to the water wisdom of the Arthashastra The Ganges Basin has been continuously farmed for roughly nine millennia, making it one of the world’s oldest living agricultural landscapes. Long before tractors,…
Seven months into 2026 and the world’s cities have already lived through a preview of what climate scientists have been warning about for a decade: extreme weather that arrives faster, hits harder, and breaks records that were supposed to last generations. A summer town in South Australia hit 49.5°C. Snow drifts in northern Japan buried…
When most people picture a zero-emission car, they picture a Tesla plugged into a wall charger overnight. That mental shortcut is fair – battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have won the mainstream conversation. But there is a second, quieter zero-emission technology that has been on public roads since 2015 and is now scaling fast in trucking,…
Long before pumps, pipes, and center-pivot sprinklers, wild animals were already managing water across entire landscapes. Beavers, prairie dogs, wombats, and dozens of other native species move soil, slow streams, and open channels for rainwater in ways engineers are only now learning to copy. For farmers and landowners facing rising energy bills and deepening droughts,…
Water covers roughly 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, yet less than 1 percent of it is fresh, accessible, and fit for drinking, farming, or industry. We call it “liquid gold” for good reason: it is the one resource nothing else can substitute. Every glass we drink, every crop we grow, and every product we…
Water is quietly becoming the most consequential input on the modern farm – more decisive to next season’s yield than fertilizer, seed genetics, or even labor. Agriculture accounts for roughly 72% of all freshwater withdrawn globally, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) AQUASTAT 2025 snapshot, and renewable freshwater availability…
