The Climate Solution: India's Climate Change Crisis And What We Can Do About It

by Mridula Ramesh, Nimisha Sirohi (Reading)

From fatal heatwaves and cruel droughts to devastating floods and fast-depleting water tables, climate change is the greatest disruptor of our time - and it can no longer be ignored. For most of us the odds seem overwhelming and solutions out of reach. Yet, in this forcefully argued book, climate-change practitioner, teacher and investor Mridula Ramesh emphasizes that while the situation is grim, it is not without hope. Drawing on her extensive practical and investing experience, she explores myriad facets of this raging why women are peculiarly affected by a warming climate; how climate change poses a security threat to the Indian state; why just focusing on green sources of power is an incomplete solution for India; how managing waste can create lakhs of urban jobs; and how households can cope in a ‘Day Zero' water situation. In doing so, she shows how climate warriors, from the cotton fields of Punjab and thriving eco start-ups in Bengaluru to a forest guardian in Assam and the johads of Rajasthan, have employed ingenuity and initiative to adapt to the changing conditions – and sometimes reverse their shattering effects. Timely, urgent and thought-provoking, this book is an urgent call to action – and an essential manifesto for every Indian citizen to follow.

Audio CD

Published May 26, 2020

About the author

Mridula Ramesh is the founder of the Sundaram Climate Institute, which focuses on waste and water solutions and education. She is an active angel investor in cleantech startups, with a portfolio of over a dozen startups. A graduate with distinction of Cornell University, with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Mridula worked at McKinsey in Silicon Valley before returning to India. Leveraging on her two decades of management experience, she teaches a postgraduate class on climate change at the Great Lakes Institute of Management and is a regular columnist for Firstpost on Climate Change and has written earlier extensively for the Hindu. She is the Executive Director of Sundaram Textiles and lives and experiments in Madurai in a net zero-waste house with her husband and two children.