As climate change intensifies, digital technologies are being rapidly integrated into climate adaptation frameworks. While these technologies promise real-time environmental monitoring and predictive capacity, they also raise critical ethical, ecological, and social concerns. In the Indian context, the convergence of digital climate technologies with governance frameworks has created both possibilities for smart adaptation and risks inherent in what this study terms “surveillance ecology”. This study addresses three questions: (1) How do digital climate innovations both strengthen adaptive capacity and endanger sociopolitical safety? (2) How does surveillance ecology exacerbate existing inequalities in India? (3) How can traditional ecological knowledge be integrated with digital tools to promote inclusive and just climate adaptation? Guided by post-structuralist and decolonial epistemologies, the research employs a qualitative systematic literature review. Findings show that while digital adaptation efforts enhance resilience, they also centralize power, limit community autonomy, and generate unintended rebound effects, such as excessive e-waste and high-energy data infrastructures. The study argues for a paradigm shift from technocratic adaptation to justice-centred innovation. Future research should investigate the ground-level impacts of surveillance ecology and assess how low-carbon digital infrastructures can minimize ecological harm.
With increased focus on ocean-based economic development, the preparation of ocean satellite accounts (also known as marine economy satellite accounts or core ocean GDP accounts) is slowly gaining importance. Ocean accounting is important and useful on many counts, as it helps us understand the role of oceans and coasts in the economy, among others. Several countries have initiated discussions to develop ocean accounts in different ways. India’s ocean accounting efforts can be strengthened by drawing on key learnings from international experiences and adapting them to the Indian context. The implementation of ocean accounting could pose several challenges. Drawing upon international experiences and existing commentaries on the subject, the article lists some of these challenges that must be considered while preparing India’s ocean accounts.
This paper provides a brief on the economics of biodiversity. The human economy is seen here as being embedded in the biosphere, which is an all-embracing planetary capital asset. Ecosystems are components of the biosphere; hence, they are considered forms of ‘natural capital’. The economics of biodiversity thus constitutes the study of a specific class of asset management problems. Theoretical reasoning and empirical findings tell us that human activities have given rise to ecological overreach, breaching the safe operating space of our planetary boundaries. In effect, we have been overdrawing the global stock of natural capital. The underlying reason for the increasing overdraft is the under-pricing of natural capital. The implications of this for our economic prospects are the subject of this paper.
