Fractured/Earth

Some of you will have heard of CBAM — Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism; Europe’s green trade barrier which stops coal-based steel from entering the EU market. Ask the EU about it and it will say CBAM is meant to ensure faster decarbonisation. Ask steel-making countries, however, and they accuse EU of an unfair trade practice that will support local/larger firms over others.
Who do you think is right?
As it turned out, I was in Malaysia in November. And, as it also turned out, the country’s experience with Sustainable Palm Oil — which has been hit by a similar EU ban seeking to block Oil Palm grown on clear-felled tropical forests — has some answers. What we seem to get is mainly a re-adjustment of trade flows + continuing deforestation because, even as oil palm comes under scrutiny, other uses of forestland (some more profitable than oil palm) continue unhindered. Do read: https://carboncopy.info/can-green-trade-barriers-save-the-environment/

PS: And just like that, this year is over too. More by chance than anything else, forests were a major theme this year. I had Great Nicobar at the start of this year, then reports on timber trafficking, then forest cover, and now, this report on Oil Palm and whether schemes like RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) can work. I am glad for this report. It has given me some context on questions on offsets and REDD+ that I can now use to get deeper into questions around logging, carbon credits and afforestation (Forests extended past journalism into life itself. I went to Great Nicobar and stood before its ancient forest. Later in the year, I went to Borneo from KL and walked within the 130 million year old rainforest at Danum Valley. And more recently, returned from Kaziranga).
On the whole, this is how the year has been on the professional front:
1. In the aftermath of the Adani/Jagan?US SEC chargesheet: How to reboot India’s renewable energy sector?
2. This deep-dive into the dodgy economics of the Great Nicobar port project for Frontline which concluded that the only viable components of the project were construction tenders and logging. https://frontline.thehindu.com/environment/great-nicobar-project-campbell-bay-transshipment-terminal-galathea-bay-infrastructure-project/article69159231.ece (here is a blogpost on how it felt to see, for the first time in my life, a primeval ecosystem untouched by modernity: https://mrajshekhar.in/2025/02/13/pain-and-rapture-in-great-nicobar/) 
3. Then came an accompanying report looking at the colonial nature of the Andaman and Nicobar administration. It pushes large projects and Delhi’s agendas while ignoring/mistreating the locals. https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/tnm-investigation-the-human-cost-of-misgovernance-in-the-andamans
4. An op-ed on the dodgy economics of the Great Nicobar port project for the Economic Times. This was shortly after Ram Guha wrote a column blasting India’s pink dailies for staying mum on the project. And so, I think the two developments are linked. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/epaper/delhicapital/2025/apr/12/satet-edit/great-nicobar-gamble-risk-it/articleshow/120217586.cms
5. A major theme this year was Trump. He launched his tariff war — for one. That resulted in a first report asking what it might mean for decarbonisation? A second report asking whether the global south would grab this chance to reconfigure its trade relations with developed countries by boosting trade with each other? And a third report, as talks progressed, on whether India would choose short-term pain or long-term pain (by acceding to Trump’s demands)? We know the answer to this one by now. We are making costly, stupid concessions like buying gas from the USA.
6. Then came a puzzling moment. Unexpected by all, the union government abruptly banned online money games — and a chilling social shift stood highlighted. Namely, this. “Much has been written about how India’s small businessmen, in the wake of dropping revenues, switched to stock trading in the hope of higher returns. Similarly, crores of Indians (especially those from poorer families), faced with dwindling opportunities but aided by the spread of UPI, cheap smartphones, cheaper data and familiarity with games like cricket, have turned to online real money games. Along the way, India became a land of speculators.”
7. Then came another report, in TIME this time, on the Great Nicobar project. This one meshed ecology and economics and was more holistic.
8. Then came five reports on India’s forests. The curtain-raiser flagged the well-known paradox that India’s forest cover is rising even as human pressures on forests rise as well — and said that, for this to hold, the country would need to be doing world class afforestation plus curbing illicit timber felling in forests. We know worldclass afforestation is not happening — too many CAG reports, etc, already out on this — and so, CarbonCopy and I took a closer look at illegal felling/trade of khair (acacia catechu). We found the forest department complicit in illegal felling and trade of the species (much wanted by the pan masala industry), almost driving the tree to extinction in MP and then UP. And that, as the third part showed, the trade is now shifting to J&K, Himachal and Uttarakhand.
9. Then comes the question of questions. If India is cutting forests with gusto (Great Nicobar, etc) + afforestation is rubbish + illegal felling is proceeding with ease as well (khair, you see, is just an instance), then how much of India do natural forests cover now? The FSI says 21% of India. Scientists at NRSC and elsewhere say 1-10%.
10. An yet larger question lies here. When a country has not 21% but less than 10% of its land under forests, what does it portend? Our concluding piece argues that, even as the world talks about TFFF (Tropical Forests Forever Facility) and its subsidy of $4/hectare for keeping tropical forests intact, the incentives for deforestation + afforestation in India run much higher. Khair shows us that. As do India’s numerous afforestation schemes. We will lose our natural forests. And with that, our capacity to last as a society.
11. Then came the Oil Palm/Malaysia/CBAM report that I mentioned at the start of this email. 
Apart from these, another major report this year has been on India’s desire + attempt to emerge as a weapons manufacturing/exporting hub. That report will be published early next year.

And with that, as Calvin says, the turbo is pooped. I am heading into silence and reading — after finishing one last energy trends newsletter. See you all next year. Have a good, calm end to 2025.