Environmentalism, historian and columnist Ramachandra Guha has written, is thought to be a “full-stomach phenomenon” – it’s believed to be a Western concern because people in countries like India are simply too poor to be green.

That’s a myth that he conclusively blows apart in his latest book, Speaking With Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism.

The book is an exploration of the explores the work of ten individuals who – though not all of them Indian – have warned about the dangers of environmental degradation from an Indian point of view.

With Speaking With Nature, Guha returns to his roots. His first book, The Unquiet Woods, was about Chipko movement to conserve forests in Uttarakhand. And several other of his early works concerned the environment. They include This Fissured Land and Ecology and Equity, both co-authored with Madhav Gadgil and How Much Should a Person Consume?: Thinking Through the Environment.

In this interview with Scroll editor Naresh Fernandes on World Environment Day, he explains why India would be an environmental disaster zone even if the crisis of climate change did not exist and elaborates on the role of the ten figures in his book who “played a pioneering role in shaping global conversations about humanity’s relationship with nature”.