Books that unpack South Asian climate justice
Politics and Resistance of Coal in Australia and India
Through the Stop Adani movement and its collaboration with the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners and farmers against coalmining in Queensland, and Greenpeace and forest-based communities resisting coalmining in Madhya Pradesh, Ruchira Talukdar compares anti-coal movement dynamics in Australia and India. And grapples with the question of how movements deal with the violation of Indigenous land rights through coal extraction. This book is based on ethnographic and historical research in both countries. It proposes a global outlook – an intersectional framework beyond the singularity of ‘stopping coal’ that can encapsulate visions for secure futures of communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel struggles – for climate activism.
Alternative Futures
A collection of 35 essays on India’s future by activists, researchers, media practitioners, policymakers, and grassroots workers, envisioning an India that is egalitarian, democratic, sustainable, equitable, and culturally diverse. The book covers ecological futures including environmental governance, biodiversity, water, and energy; political futures involving democracy, power, law, ideology, and India’s global role; economic futures across agriculture, pastoralism, industry, crafts, cities, markets, transport, and technology; and socio-cultural futures on languages, education, health, gender, and marginalised communities.
Angor
Jacinta Kerketta has in a short time succeeded in becoming acclaimed in the Hindi literary world due to her consistent creativity. The alertness and efficiency with which she has introduced a particular context in her verses, is a new experience to poetry lovers. Her poems effectively convey the pain, anguish and anger of the indigenous tribal society. Additionally, Jacinta has sought to empathetically understand the tribal woman’s plight through her poems. Mahadev Toppo (First Reprint, 2019)
Climate Justice in the Majority World
This edited collection examines climate (in)justice across the Majority World, where climate impacts are most severe yet many solutions emerge. With 12 chapters by over 30 authors, it highlights how communities that contributed least to global warming face the greatest burdens. Covering activism, lived experiences, disasters, and contested narratives across multiple countries, it adopts a decolonial, intersectional lens. Offering rich empirical insights and conceptual interventions, it is valuable for students, academics, activists, policymakers, and the wider public.
Democracy in the Woods
Democracy in the Woods explores how societies balance environmental protection with social justice by comparing forestland regimes in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. Through examining land rights conflicts and the experiences of forest-dependent peasants, it challenges the assumption that redistributive policies undermine conservation. Instead, it shows that inclusive or exclusive environmental outcomes depend on political parties’ incentives to address peasant demands. The book offers a rigorous analysis of how politics shape fair and effective forest governance.
In the Belly of the River
In the Belly of the River addresses these questions through an account of the lives of Bhilala adivasis in the Narmada valley who are fighting against displacement by the Sardar Sarovar dam in western India. On the basis of intensive fieldwork and historical research, this study places the tribal community in the context of its experience of state domination. Combining aspects of adivasi kinship and religion with the political economy of resource use, the book highlights the contradictions inherent in tribal relationships with nature - contradictions that permeate adivasi consciousness as well as practices.
Junglenama
Jungle Nama is Amitav Ghosh’s verse retelling of the Bon Bibi legend from the Sundarban, featuring the greedy merchant Dhona, the poor boy Dukhey and his mother, Dokkhin Rai the tiger-spirit, Bon Bibi the forest goddess, and her brother Shah Jongoli. Adapted from a nineteenth-century tale written in the Bengali dwipodi poyar meter, it is told in twenty-four-syllable couplets. With artwork by Salman Toor, this illuminated edition brings the Sundarban’s magic to life.
Just Transition
This book applies a critical feminist lens to India’s national climate policies, examining what a truly just transition would mean for marginalised groups. Centring gender and power, it explores how equitable climate mitigation and adaptation can be achieved across sectors such as agriculture, forestry and renewable energy. Through case studies and contributions from academics, practitioners and policymakers, it shows why India’s experience is a key test for achieving fair, inclusive transitions globally.
Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink
Marginlands follows Arati Kumar-Rao as she journeys through India’s most endangered landscapes—the Thar desert, the fragmented rivers of the Gangetic dolphin, the embattled Sunderban, the flooded Mumbai coastline, and Kerala’s eroding shores. Through intimate conversations and close observation, she documents the ignored warnings and damaging decisions pushing these ecosystems to collapse. Blending nature writing, journalism, art, and photography, this urgent work reveals the wisdom held in fragile lands and the lessons they offer for resisting slow environmental violence.
Out of this Earth
Out of this Earth examines how our dependence on minerals—especially bauxite—shapes both modern life and environmental devastation. Focusing on Odisha’s khondalite mountains, home to some of the world’s richest deposits, the book shows how the aluminium industry promises prosperity yet inflicts deep harm on local communities and ecosystems. Tracing its global footprint across Brazil, Australia, Guyana, Jamaica, Guinea, Ghana and Iceland, it reveals the powerful interests driving extraction and the profound human and ecological costs of this industry.
Planetary Justice
This book brings together interdisciplinary climate scholarship and grassroots activism to explore what planetary justice could mean across human difference, generations, species, and the boundary between life and non-life. Written amid fires, storms, climate strikes and a pandemic, contributors from India, Australia, Canada and Scotland draw on Indigenous, Black, Southern, ecosocialist and ecofeminist perspectives. Through diverse, accessible voices, it examines the politics and practices needed to build a thriving, just planetary future.
Speaking with Nature
Speaking with Nature challenges the assumption that countries like India are “too poor to be green” by uncovering a rich, often overlooked lineage of early Indian environmental thought. Long before Silent Spring or contemporary climate discourse, figures such as Tagore, Mukerjee, Kumarappa, Geddes, the Howards, Mira, Verrier Elwin, Munshi and Krishnan wrote insightfully on forests, wildlife, soil, water, urbanisation and industry. Ramachandra Guha frames their work as “livelihood environmentalism,” offering vital historical context for today’s climate challenges.
Uprooted
Uprooted documents the lives of the Van Gujjars and Taungyas of the Uttarakhand Terai, long-time forest dwellers now facing encroachment, exclusionary conservation and state-driven “development.” Through intimate drawings and conversations gathered between 2021 and 2025, Ita Mehrotra traces their shifting relationship with the forest, the weight of colonial and postcolonial laws, and the hopes sparked by the Forest Rights Act. The book highlights youth resilience, the politics of resettlement, and offers a vivid visual archive of India’s forest rights struggle.