City Profile: Hyderabad

The report documents the urban transformation of Hyderabad, from its founding in the sixteenth century to its present day positioning as a global centre, especially for Information Technology (IT)- and Life Sciences-based industries. Locating the city’s contemporary experience of climate in this history is important. While the city has been a key cultural and economic centre since its founding, its transformation into a global centre has dramatically altered the city’s spatial and demographic characteristics, and the texture of its built environment. Such transformations have profound implications for how heat is experienced and responded to in the city

Plastic pollution and the open burning of plastic wastes

The open burning of plastic wastes is a practice that is highly prevalent across the globe, toxic to human and environmental health, and a critical—but often overlooked—aspect of plastic pollution. Most of the countries where such burning is widespread have laws and policies in place against it; open burning continues nevertheless. In this article, using data from ethnographic fieldwork in urban and rural sites in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Zambia, we examine local practices of open burning and investigate why regulations to tackle it have proven largely ineffective. Adopting a harm reduction approach, we then suggest preliminary measures to mitigate the health risks of open burning by targeting those plastics and packaging types that are most toxic when burned