November 2025
In short: India's wildlife, climate and conservation news this month — distilled for SI/Constable Prelims.
Current Affairs — India › Environment · 13 min read · Free to read · English & Telugu
Bilingual study notes for the Andhra Pradesh Police SI & Constable exams (SLPRB AP) by AP Police Hub, a product of Anvil Academy.
November 2025's environment round-up beyond the Science digest — Delhi-NCR's Stage-III GRAP smog emergency, India crossing 51% non-fossil electricity capacity, the first Pan-India vulture assessment, the India-Botswana cheetah translocation, Supreme Court directions on tiger-reserve tourism, and a stack of global climate-report findings.
November 2025 — At a Glance
Beyond COP30 and the tribal-relocation policy already covered in this month's Science digest, November 2025 carried a genuinely separate stream of environment news. Delhi-NCR triggered its emergency Stage-III response to a familiar winter smog crisis, even as India quietly crossed a landmark 51% non-fossil share of installed power capacity — five years ahead of its 2030 target. The Wildlife Institute of India released its first-ever Pan-India vulture assessment, eight cheetahs arrived from Botswana under Project Cheetah, and the Supreme Court issued fresh directions to curb tiger-reserve tourism pressure. A wave of global climate-report releases — on adaptation finance, the cryosphere, cooling demand, and country rankings — rounded out a data-heavy month.
1. India's Air, Energy & Land Story
Urban air pollution — Stage-III GRAP across the NCR
- What — The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) implemented Stage-III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) across the entire NCR — an AQI-based emergency mechanism with four stages (Poor 201-300, Very Poor 301-400, Severe 401-450, Severe+ 451+), first created on Supreme Court directions in *M.C. Mehta vs Union of India*.
- Causes — Meteorological: winter temperature inversion and low wind speeds trap pollutants, plus pre-monsoon dust from the Thar Desert; urban/industrial: vehicles, construction dust, industry; urban layout: narrow high-rise streets create a 'street-canyon effect'; transboundary: stubble burning in neighbouring states.
- Scale of the problem — India is the 5th most-polluted country in the world; 13 of the world's 20 most-polluted cities are in India; Byrnihat (Assam-Meghalaya border) is the world's most-polluted city; Delhi has been the world's most-polluted national capital for a 6th consecutive year (IQAir World Air Quality Report 2024-25).
- Impact — Air pollution is linked to ~15% of all deaths in Delhi in 2023; India lost economic output equivalent to 9.5% of GDP in 2022 due to air pollution (Lancet Countdown, 2025); it also causes acid rain damaging monuments like the Taj Mahal.
India's renewable energy growth — a landmark hit five years early
- The milestone — In 2025, India's renewable energy sector hit two milestones: renewable energy met 51.5% of total electricity demand (July 2025), and the share of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources reached 51% (September 2025) — meeting its updated NDC target of 50% non-fossil capacity by 2030, five years ahead of schedule.
- Global standing — India ranks 4th globally in Renewable Energy Installed Capacity and in Wind Power, and 3rd in both ethanol production and Solar Power capacity (IRENA RE Statistics 2025); solar capacity has grown ~40-fold since 2014.
- Key challenges — Intermittency (solar peaks by day but not at evening demand); transmission bottlenecks in high-wind-capacity states; heavy import dependence — India imports 80-90% of solar cells and modules from China, which controls 60% of rare-earth production.
2. Wildlife & Conservation
India's first Pan-India vulture assessment
- What — The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) released its 1st Pan-India Assessment and Monitoring of Endangered Species (Vultures), surveying 216 sites across 17 states, focused on four Critically Endangered species: White-rumped, Indian, Slender-billed and Red-headed vultures.
- Key findings — Nesting was absent from nearly 70% of historical sites; Protected Areas hold 54% of all documented nests. White-rumped vultures concentrate in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra Valley; Slender-billed vultures breed mostly in Upper Assam.
- Threats & protection — Threats include habitat loss, food scarcity, diclofenac poisoning and electrocution; vultures are protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, with diclofenac, ketoprofen and aceclofenac banned under the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (2020-25).
India-Botswana Cheetah Translocation Pact
- What — India and Botswana formally announced the translocation of eight cheetahs to India under 'Project Cheetah' — the world's first intercontinental large wild carnivore translocation initiative, launched in 2022. Earlier translocations brought eight cheetahs from Namibia (2022) and twelve from South Africa (2023).
- About the cheetah — The world's fastest mammal, and the only large carnivore that doesn't roar; declared extinct in India in 1952. Of its two species, the African Cheetah is IUCN Vulnerable and the Asiatic Cheetah is Critically Endangered, found only in Iran's arid regions.
- Governance — Implemented by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), operates under Project Tiger and Elephant (renamed 2023-24), overseen by a Cheetah Project Steering Committee established by NTCA in 2023.
Supreme Court on tiger reserves and ex-post-facto clearances
- Tiger-reserve directions — To address rising human-wildlife conflict, the Supreme Court restricted tiger safaris to non-forest or degraded forest land in buffer zones only, banned night tourism in core/critical habitats, barred commercial mining and hydro projects in buffer/fringe areas, and set a uniform ₹10 lakh ex-gratia for human deaths from such conflict.
- Recalling the Vanashakti judgment — The Supreme Court recalled its own Vanashakti judgment, which had barred the grant of ex-post-facto environmental clearances (EC) — noting the earlier ruling ignored coordinate-bench precedents like *D Swamy vs Karnataka SPCB (2021)*, which allowed post-facto EC in exceptional cases; the EIA Notification, 2006 otherwise requires prior environmental clearance.
3. Waste, Standards & Global Climate Governance
Dumpsite Remediation Accelerator Programme (DRAP)
- What — A year-long initiative under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, targeting 'Lakshya Zero Dumpsites' by September 2026. It prioritises high-impact sites covering roughly 8.8 crore tonnes of legacy waste, about 80% of which is concentrated in 214 sites across 202 Urban Local Bodies.
- Techniques — Biocapping transforms a dumpsite into a natural environment like a park; biomining uses microorganisms to extract materials of economic interest, resolving leachate and landfill-gas issues without ongoing monitoring once land is reclaimed.
Sustainability standards & industry-transition initiatives
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) — This international non-profit body, founded in 1997 and setting the world's most widely used sustainability-reporting framework, launched the 'Integrity Matters Checklist' — a UN-endorsed framework aligning corporate climate disclosures with net-zero standards.
- Leadership Group for Industry Transition (LeadIT) — India's Union Environment Minister addressed the LeadIT Industry Leaders' Roundtable at COP30, Belém. Jointly launched by India and Sweden in 2019, LeadIT is the first global high-level initiative aiming for net-zero carbon emissions from high-emitting industries by 2050; LeadIT 2.0 (2024-26) has 18 member countries and 27 companies.
- UAE Consensus — Adopted at COP28 (2023), the UAE Consensus marked the first-ever Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement — urging a just, fair transition away from fossil fuels, and goals to triple renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030.
- Montreal Protocol (MOP37) — The 37th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer concluded, highlighting discrepancies between reported and measured HFC emissions and a lack of atmospheric monitoring stations in many regions.
4. Global Climate & Environment Reports Roundup
November's wave of report releases — piggybacking on COP30 — spanned adaptation finance, the cryosphere, cooling demand, country performance rankings and land degradation.
Global reports released around COP30 — November 2025| Report | Key finding |
|---|
| UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025 | Developing nations face an adaptation finance shortfall of 310-365 billion/year by the mid-2030s, against current global adaptation funding of just 26 billion. |
| State of the Cryosphere Report 2025 | Ice-sheet losses from Greenland and Antarctica have quadrupled since the 1990s; sea ice has declined 40-60% at both poles since 1979; mountain glaciers are losing 273 gigatonnes/year (2000-2023). |
| Global Cooling Watch 2025 Report | Under a business-as-usual pathway, the global stock of cooling equipment will more than triple by 2050 (22 TW in 2022 to 68 TW); only 54 nations meet full sustainable-cooling standards. |
| Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2026 | Compares 63 countries + the EU; India ranks 23rd, slipping from a 'high' to a 'medium' performer, with no national coal-exit timeline. |
| Climate Risk Index (CRI) 2026 | Between 1995-2024, 9,700 extreme weather events caused over 8 lakh deaths and $4.5 trillion in damages; India ranked 15th in CRI 2024, facing ~430 extreme events across three decades. |
| State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2025 Report | Released by the FAO; human-induced land degradation lowers crop yields by 10% for about 1.7 billion people, with Asian countries most affected. |