about me.
Hello. I'm Aruna Chandrasekhar, a climate and environmental journalist based out of Mumbai, India.
I write about how food, land, nature, climate and policy interact for Carbon Brief.
I like getting to the bottom of difficult stories and telling them differently.
I think a lot about my own food, water and energy footprint, and with it, questions of extraction, power, justice, change, dignity and equity.
These are questions that have stayed with me from India's coalfields to UN climate, human rights and biodiversity negotiations.
My stories have been published in outlets including Carbon Brief, The New York Times, The Guardian, New Internationalist, Buzzfeed, Earther, Scroll.in, The Caravan Magazine, The Hindu and The Wire.
Since 2011, I’ve tried my best to document the lived realities of communities at risk and peoples’ resistance movements in a fast-warming world: as an independent journalist, as a legal researcher working with mining-affected communities and movements in India and as an extractives and climate lead at Amnesty International.
Other things I’ve done for a living: research, teaching, talking, making people laugh and singing.
Photo credit: Gayatri Ganju (2019).
recognition.
2019-20 Chevening Scholar, awarded to study an Msc. in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford.
2019 TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting, Honourable Mention for a special investigation into the Adani group’s close ties to the ruling party in Delhi, allowing it to amend energy, land and environmental laws.
Red Ink Award Winner, 2018 for the story "The Anatomy Of A Fake Surrender: A Movement Against Bauxite Mining In Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills And The State’s Efforts To Circumvent It" published in The Caravan Magazine.
Shriram Financial Journalism Award Winner, 2018 for Economic Policy for the story "How the Ganga and GST are hijacking India’s clean energy fund" published in Scroll.in.
