Kasmin Fernandes

Supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts towards a clean and green India is Chrome Pictures, a Mumbai-based production house behind the Bollywood blockbuster, Badhaai Ho. Its management is making a conscious effort to ensure that their offices, studios, and film sets are being adapted and improvised in order to minimise single-use plastic. Says co-founder Aleya...

Earlier this month, Indore hosted a first of its kind event that showcased Androgynous Fashion, which focuses on breaking archaic gender stereotypes. Feronia Fashion Night is the only event in India that puts models from the LGBT community at the forefront. The event is an initiative taken by the team of Redo Times Pvt....

The World Bank estimates that more than a fifth of all communicable diseases in India (21%) are caused by contaminated water. According to a study by the Indian Nitrogen Group, a task force of scientists tracking the issue, the amount of reactive nitrogen in a bulk of the water bodies in India is already...

Three months after at least 20 lions in Gujarat succumbed to a virus, the Centre and the Gujarat governments announced a Asiatic Lion Conservation Project. The Asiatic Lion is listed as ‘Endangered’ under the IUCN Red List. It is exposed to severe threats in the Gir region like shrinking habitat, vulnerability to diseases, death...

The global climate strike, inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, kicked off in the Pacific islands and followed the rising sun across Australia, Japan, Southeast Asia and then Europe, Africa and the Middle East. In 2018, Greta Thunberg, teen climate activist, sat for three weeks outside the Swedish Parliament to protest against a lack...

The importance of food, agriculture and land use to sustainable development is clearer than ever. Transforming the entire food production system could significantly help to mitigate climate change, improve human health, promote economic development and reduce poverty. Published in 2019, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Climate Change and Land...

When 16-year-old climate warrior Greta Thunberg said #HowDareYou at the United Nations (U.N.), she gave a room full of world leaders a dressing down for their inaction. "This is all wrong," she stated, her voice trembling. "I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet...

Across the globe, indigenous and rural women already make invaluable contributions to their communities while sustainably managing natural resources. They use, manage, and conserve territories that comprise over 50% of the world’s land and support up to 2.5 billion men, women and children. About one in three people is dependent on communal land for their...

Radhika Joshi lost a loved one to kidney failure. That is when she realized that every year about 5 lakh individuals lose their lives due to the unavailability of organs and only 0.86% per million people donate their organs due to countless myths surrounding this cause. 19-year-old Radhika founded The Second Chance Project, which uses...

The accumulation of marine litter in the world’s oceans over the past decades has risen. Plastic is ubiquitous, cheap to produce and extremely durable. Every piece of plastic ever produced still exists, therefore much of it has ended up, in the oceans. Worryingly, plastic breaks up over time into smaller and smaller pieces known as...

There are multiple agencies involved in the renewable energy sector in India. At the central level, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is the nodal ministry of the Government of India (GoI). The broad aim of the ministry is to develop and deploy new and renewable energy for supplementing the energy requirements...

A new global coalition to combat sand and dust storms was launched at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Conference of Parties (UNCCD COP14) meeting in Delhi recently. Sand and dust storms—also known as sirocco, haboob, yellow dust, white storms, and the harmattan—are a natural phenomenon linked with land and water management, and climate...