India

Small islands bereft of mountains are going to sink beneath the waves as sea levels rise and for the millions of people living on them, climate change is not some distant, abstract concept but a concrete reality. As noted last week, the Sundarbans islands of India and Bangladesh have lost four islands completely. Sorry, 'lost' implies that they were carelessly misplaced behind a cupboard. 'Forcibly taken' would perhaps be more apt.

It's not just on this country that people get so riled about climate change that they're driven into taking drastic action, action such as, oh I don't know, climbing a chimney stack in a coal-fired power station.

A new series of videos from our Indian office (compiled into one above) showcases six activists who explain why they climbed the chimney at Kolaghat power station in October 2007 and spent a few days in jail after their arrest.

Sea turtles have been nesting at Gahirmatha on the Orissa coast of India for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. But if we don't act now, we could see this change within a decade – an eye blink in geological timescales.

A new port being built at Dhamra, near Gahirmatha, will push the endangered olive ridley sea turtle closer to the slippery edge of extinction. The main threat to the turtles is posed by dredging to make a channel deep enough for large ships to anchor.