The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth (DTE) magazine released their annual publication, State of India’s Environment, on February 26, 2025.
The State of India’s Environment 2025 was released Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa and former Chief Executive Officer, NITI Ayog; Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former Deputy Chairperson, Planning Commission; Raj Liberhan, Management and Financial Expert and Chairperson, Executive Board, CSE; Sunita Narain, Director General, CSE and Editor, DTE; Richard Mahapatra, Managing Editor, DTE and Souparno Banerjee, Senior Director, Outreach, CSE.
The report is a comprehensive documentation of the year’s major developments and happenings in a wide range of subjects and issues — ranging from climate change, waste management to air and water pollution, industrial contamination and food.
The Annual State of India’s Environment 2025 report is available here on sale.
This year’s edition has sections dedicated to plastics, biodiversity, health, climate change, rivers, water, heat, air pollution and waste.
There are special segments focusing on 40 years of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, antimicrobial resistance, the Western Ghats, India’s 500 GW renewable energy dream, migration and displacement, the Great Nicobar Islands and climate change’s impact on the Thar desert.
“We cannot afford to not act. We must improve environmental management for our sakes,” Narain said in a speech before the release of the book.
The release was followed by a panel discussion between Kant, Ahluwalia, Liberhan and Narain. The subject was ‘Anti-environmentalism in a Climate-risked, De-globalised World’.
Ahluwalia broached upon the changing geopolitical scenario, which he said was changing very fast and not exactly for the better. While he hoped that this state of affairs would soon change for the better, in the meantime, India “must create credibility that it internally is capable of taking decisions that the rest of the world is not”.
Kant spoke about the war in Ukraine that has now lasted for three years. “The stability of post-World War II Europe is now gone. There is also a breakdown of global supply chains worldwide. Third, there are new forces of production and productivity like AI and quantum computing emerging which have huge implications of transforming people’s lives at the same time capable of triggering conflict.”
He added that the current crisis because of these global trends was not actually a ‘crisis’ but an opportunity for India to accelerate the pace in clean tech manufacturing as well as a range of other areas.
According to Kant, there was also complete breakdown of municipal governance which must be fixed. Lastly, he noted that there was also a failure of citizens, who could not even segregate municipal solid waste.
The failure of India is not about finance but good governance, concluded Kant.
Liberhan said India had a huge task to do at the national level, the complexities of the geopolitical scene notwithstanding. “Local government is non-existent in the majority of our cities and is not able to perform wherever it is present. They must be empowered.”
It is a mile-long effort for environmentalists to bring consciousness and awareness among different players and the conversation must go on, he added.