ENVIRONMENT engineer Sagar Dhara opened the first class of the climate school organised by XR in Mumbai in late January of 2020 with a slide about a school in the Sundarbans, a mangrove delta in the Bay of Bengal. That was in 2014. Dhara, as he sat in the room on the first floor of Lower Parel performance space G5A, addressing an audience of around 10, said that due to a combination of subsidence and sea rise, the school was wiped out by 2017. u201c Climate change is not something that will happen in 50 years. Itu2019s happening right now.u201d The class that went on for a few hours had Dhara break down some of the nuances of the issue at handu2014 from each countryu2019s contribution to the carbon emission to the individual. Cities, as he emphasises during a phone call interview from Hyderabad where he is based, contribute far more to carbon emissions than rural areas.

u201c And areas in rural regions, where power plants are set up to supply to the cities, are badly affected by this,u201d adds Dhara, founding member of the South Asian Peopleu2019s Action on Climate Crisis.