Giving Compass' Take:

• Sunil Amrith reports that research confirms that global climate change has a great effect on the South Asian monsoons. India is a major pollution producer and this is directly related to their human activity, agriculture and rural economies. 

• How can funders help to reduce pollution in this area? How can countries prepare for shifting monsoon patterns? 

• Learn about the problems India is encountering when trying to take environmentally beneficial measures. 

Over the next decade, more than 400 large dams will be built on the Himalayan rivers—by India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan—to feed the region’s hunger for electricity and its need for irrigation. New ports and thermal power plants line the coastal arc that runs from India, through Southeast Asia, to China. India and China have embarked on schemes to divert rivers to bring water to their driest lands: Costing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, they are the largest and most expensive construction projects the world has ever seen. At stake in how these plans unfold is the welfare of a significant portion of humanity. At stake is the future shape of Asia, the relations among its nations.

The Indian subcontinent is the crucible of the monsoon. In its simplest definition, the monsoon is “a seasonal prevailing wind.” There are other monsoons, in northern Australia and in North America; none is as pronounced, as marked in its reversal between wet and dry seasons, as the South Asian monsoon. More than 70 percent of total rainfall in South Asia occurs during just three months each year, between June and September. Even within that period, rainfall is not consistent: It is compressed into just 100 hours of torrential rain across the summer months.

Read the full article on how India's pollution will effect monsoons by Sunil Amrith at The Atlantic.