Best books on environment and climate change 2025: Five books that ask what it means to live on a damaged planet

The Burning Earth, An Environmental History of the last 500 years  by Sunil Amrith

The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith documents the environmental history of the last 500 years. (Source: amazon.in)

“The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want,” Sunil Amrith quotes writer Samantha Harvey in the introductory pages of The Burning Earth, An Environmental History of the last 500 years. In about 400-odd pages, he then proceeds to trace links between the ecological upheavals of today and the processes of capitalism, imperialism, industrial revolution, systems of production and extraction, modern technologies and contemporary ideas about nature. It’s a tour de force which combines staggering geographical sweep with immaculate attention to detail, drawing on sources from a variety of disciplines. Amrith frames climate change as stemming from inequality, both between humans and nature and among human societies.

Is a River Alive Robert MacFarlane

Is a River Alive Robert MacFarlane is almost a travelogue. (Source: amazon.in)

Water has been rinsed of its complex social and metaphysical contents and reduced to a cleaning fluid, writes Robert MacFarlane in Is A River Alive, citing the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich. MacFarlane’s quest is to underline the often-forgotten idea that rivers are not merely water repositories, meant for human use. The possibility that a river has a personality forces us to think differently, he writes, while exploring aquifers in Ecuador, South India and in Quebec in Canada. Is a River Alive is as much a travelogue as a piece of political writing. At the core of the book is Macfarlane’s contention that if a river is alive, human exceptionalism must give way to a society that’s more attentive and empathetic to the ways of nature.

Plant Thinkers of 20th Century Bengal by Sumana Roy

Plant Thinkers of 20th Century Bengal by Sumana Roy introduces us to the worldview of several lesser known thinkers. (Source: Oxford/Ashoka University)

In Plant Thinkers of 20th Century Bengal, forests, gardens, grass, trees, shrubs and weeds are much more than a muse for some of the intellectual giants of the region – Jagadish Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Jibananda Das, Shakti Chattopadhyay. For them the vegetal world is a caring friends which also demands empathy for its quirks. Roy also takes us to the “plant-centred” worldview of several lesser known thinkers, including Maya mashi, a Bangladeshi refugee who left a deep impact on the writer by annotating her work as a domestic help with imaginative references to the vegetal world. Such sensitivities, argues Roy, anticipated several contemporary debates on nature, ecology and environmental ethics.

Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh

Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh explores the contemporary ecological crisis. (Source: amazon.in)

This collection of essays traverse Amitav Ghosh’s arc as a writer who has cast a critical eye on the ways human societies relate to themselves and the environment. In exploring contemporary ecological crisis and lending an attentive ear to the experiences of migrants, tribal communities, friends and fellow academics, Ghosh draws attention to the myriad forms of inequalities – between communities, humans and nature, worldviews, nations. The essays nudge the reader into questioning the certitudes of Eurocentric modernity and affirm Ghosh as a major moral voice of our times.

In Praise of Floods and the Life It Brings by James C Scott

In Praise of Floods and the Life It Brings by James C Scott explores the untamed river. (source: amazon.in)

In this posthumously published work, one of the modern greats of social science tries to give the often-denied dues to the “wild and wicked” ways of the river. Scot invites readers to look at floods as a life affirming force – he shows how inundation rejuvenates soil, causes biodiversity to thrive and ultimately benefit riverine communities. Set along the course of the Ayeyarwady in Myanmar, In Praise of Floods and the Life it Brings, is a powerful argument against the anthropocentric understanding of rivers. It’s a plea to “lend an ear to birds, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans” and appreciate the myriad ways of marshes, tributaries and wetlands.