Nimli (near Alwar), Rajasthan, February 25, 2026: “The climate crisis is reaching a point of no return – if we take the average of past three years, the world will exceed 1.5C for the first time: this is a signal that we will be breaching the safety guardrail”: said Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).
She was speaking at the Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2026, an annual conclave of communicators and reporters from India who write on environment and development issues. Around 70 journalists from across the country are participating in this one-of-its-kind gathering, organised every year by CSE at its facility, the Anil Agarwal Environment Training Institute, located in Nimli, Rajasthan.
CSE and Down To Earth’s flagship publication, the annual State of India’s Environment (SOE) report was released at the event by Justice Deepak Gupta, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India; Ashok Lavasa, former Secretary, Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India; and Narain herself.
Quoting the Global Tipping Points report, Narain also pointed out that ecosystems like coral reefs in tropical warm oceans are now crossing their thermal tipping point – coral deaths are becoming irreversible. The planet is already on the brink of similar points in hotspots like the Amazon rainforests.
Breaching of the planetary boundaries
The 2026 SOE has drawn attention to another breaching: that of ‘planetary boundaries’. These boundaries “tell us how much damage we humans have done to the Earth”, says Richard Mahapatra, Managing Editor, Down To Earth and the lead editor of the report.
There are nine planetary boundaries identified by researchers: climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading and stratospheric ozone depletion.
Of these nine, humans have “blown past the safe zone” in six (as per 2024 data). “We are now in the danger zone, where we – as well as every other species – are now at risk,” says the SOE report. The six breached boundaries are climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows and introduction of novel entities. In fact, a seventh boundary has now joined the list: that of ocean acidification.
The SOE report quotes the latest Planetary Health Check study, which says that ocean acidification, driven by fossil fuel combustion, has increased: surface ocean acidity has gone up by 30-40 per cent since the advent of the industrial era. Rising acidity threatens corals, molluscs and plankton that build calcium carbonate shells or skeletons. In terms of biosphere integrity, extinction rate of species ranges above 100 extinctions per million species years – way above the safe threshold of 10.
While the pace of deforestation has slowed, global forest cover has fallen to 59 per cent, well below the 75 per cent safe minimum. Freshwater reserves are in a dire state. Novel entities such as plastics, inadequately tested chemicals and synthetic materials remain a growing threat.
Says Narain: “What is clear is that in 2025, the world has entered a new age of the unknown. Climate impacts are now arriving earlier than expected. This unpredictable future should worry us, simply because we have nothing to fall back upon, neither is there anything that can guide us through what lies ahead.”
CSE will be sending out more press releases over the next few days based on the AAD discussions and information contained in the State of India’s Environment 2026 report.
