Roli Srivastava

Farmer K. Rama Devi spends her days teaching climate-resilient agriculture skills, an unassuming champion of women's rights in a rural part of south India where men still take key decisions.

The head of a self-help group in Andhra Pradesh state, Devi has never marched in a climate rally nor lobbied world leaders, instead focusing her efforts on the practical details of growing crops in a world suffering the effects of more extreme weather.

Seeking to boost interest in agriculture in his part of southern India, K. Rajendra quit his job running a computer training institute five years ago and now uses YouTube videos and WhatsApp messages to promote "natural farming" to young people.

"Most farmers in this region are aged between 60 and 80. Parents don't want their children to do farming, and ask them to migrate to cities," he said.

Mumbai chauffeur Nutan Pathak is a farmer at heart.

Pathak, 44, migrated from his village in eastern Bihar state over two decades ago to work in the big city on the other side of the country, hoping to supplement his family's income reliant on wheat and rice from their 1.5-acre (0.6-hectare) farm.

In the scenic Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, cleaning squads patrol forest and mountain trails on the lookout for litter left behind by tourists, removing empty water bottles and crisp packets stuck in bushes and trees.

The money to run these teams comes from a tourist tax that Bhutan has levied for decades to avoid over-tourism and preserve its status as South Asia's only carbon-negative country - meaning it absorbs more emissions than it produces annually.

Indian researcher Sabir Ahamed took a linguist's help to translate the term "just transition" into Bengali for his new study on the impact of coal mine closures on local people, as countries start to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Ahamed settled on the somewhat poetic "kalo theke aalo", which literally means "from darkness to hope", after consulting the language expert for a phrase his target audience of coal communities in India's state of West Bengal would understand.

Riding a red electric scooter on country roads in eastern India, Sanjulata Mahanta has become something of a poster girl for millet since she stunned fellow villagers by planting the hardy grain - and making a profit - three years ago.

"People laughed at me and said I was growing grass," Mahanta, 35, said on a humid morning as farmers from Kaurikala village in Odisha state gathered under a tree for a millet workshop mixing history, cookery and climate change adaptation.

Women will bear the brunt of extreme heat as more frequent heatwaves on a warming planet pose a growing threat to their work, earnings and lives, researchers have warned.

The impacts of rising heat are disproportionately dangerous and costly to women - be it at home or on the job - according to a report titled 'The Scorching Divide' by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock).

India's drive to ramp up coal output to meet growing energy demand is faltering due to banks' reluctance to finance newly auctioned mines, though most lenders remain far from ditching fossil fuels for good, analysts and officials said.

Of the 87 mines auctioned to private companies in the past three years in a push called "Unleashing Coal" - part of India's energy self-sufficiency plans - only four are operating, with the rest awaiting financing, a federal coal ministry official said, asking not to be named.

As a child, Nandha Kishore S.R. was fascinated by the wind turbine installed at a wind energy institute near his home in southern India and dreamt of one day operating such equipment.

Years later, the engineering graduate trained at the same institute in Chennai and started working in the sector, first assessing India's wind energy potential, then calculating power production and now checking site suitability for wind farms.

Indonesian fisherman Radith Giantiano is still suffering the fallout of tropical cyclone Seroja two years after it devastated his coastal community with heavy rains, floods and landslides.

The 30-year-old from Kupang in the eastern province of East Nusa Tenggara has since seen his fishing catch shrink after the cyclone damaged coral reefs, sunk boats and destroyed homes. Seroja - one of the most powerful cyclones to ever hit Indonesia - killed more than 160 people nationwide in April 2021.