What On Earth!® (WOE), the Council on Energy, Environment and Water’s (CEEW) flagship cartoon series, was showcased at the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) 2025 in a three-day, open-for-all exhibition from 24 to 26 January 2025, at Sattva Knowledge City, HITEC City. Since its inception in 2010, HLF has engaged thousands of visitors annually across 14 editions and has become a platform for diverse conversations. Its popular Climate Conversations stream, curated by EkoGalaxy founders Shreyas Sridharan and Urvi Desai, showcased critical dialogues on climate and environmental issues.
HLF had always been a green festival. For years, it had sought to be plastic-free, reuse decor and infrastructure, serve guests water in glass bottles, and encourage all attendees to use public transport, bring their own bottles, and more. In 2025, its programming brought together institutions like IIT-Hyderabad, Mongabay, and Sanctuary Asia, alongside renowned speakers such as Bittu Sahgal, Soumya Swaminathan, and Romulus Whitaker, for workshops, panel discussions, and performances. The WOE exhibition added a unique layer to these conversations, translating complex climate science into playful yet impactful cartoons that made sustainability relatable to all.
Close on the heels of the world breaching the 1.5°C temperature rise mark in 2024 and President Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement, there was renewed urgency for climate action and sustainability to become more mainstream. The cartoons at the exhibition used humour to spark conversations on sustainability and provoke discussions on climate change, exploring how people treated the planet—and how the planet treated them back.
Like all CEEW research, WOE aimed to connect the dots, helping audiences see the bigger picture and their role within it. The series, published every fortnight since July 2021, has transformed complex climate and energy science into engaging, relatable storytelling through playful yet impactful cartoons. Covering critical topics such as air pollution, sustainable food systems, clean energy, and climate finance, WOE humanised sustainability, presented fresh perspectives and solutions, and challenged existing biases and mindsets. By reframing the traditionally Global North-dominated climate narrative, WOE amplified the voice of the developing world, making these global environmental challenges a part of everyday conversations.
WOE had been included in the curriculum of MBA and communications courses, featured in climate and ESG newsletters, won an innovation recommendation at the Indian School of Business (ISB), and made it to the offices of bureaucrats and ambassadors, as well as across G20 and T20 meetings with its soft power to start conversations.
Alina Sen, Senior Communications Specialist, CEEW, said, “Cartoons have an incredible power to simplify complex ideas, evoke emotion, and cut across audiences. With What On Earth!u00ae, CEEW added comic relief to research and issues that might have seemed tough and technical so that people engaged with them. Wit could take sustainability places, as evidenced by the response WOE received in its various avatars as bookmarks, digital creatives, presentations, and as wearable and usable merchandise.”
Adding to the experience, CEEW’s Alina Sen moderated the panel discussion, “Comic Relief for a Warming World,” on 26 January, as part of the Climate Conversations stream at HLF. Along with Brikesh Singh, Chief of Communications & Engagement at ASAR, and comedian Raghav Mandava, the session explored how humour and creativity could make climate communication memorable and impactful through stand-up sets and anecdotes.
Nadia Shaik, a software engineer who visited the exhibition at the festival, said, “The messages in each of the cartoons were so thoughtful. From now on, I will think twice before ordering anything online, travelling solo in a car, and taking a beat to decide before I exploit any of the Earth’s resources.”
As with its other initiatives, WOE reflected CEEW’s broader efforts to take discussions on sustainability and climate action to wider audiences through diverse formats. These included the award-winning documentary series Faces of Climate Resilience, their annual art exhibition Sustaina India, and the inspirational solar anthem Suraj Ka Gola. By using storytelling, art, music, and visual media, CEEW sought to humanise data, highlight actionable solutions, and work with stakeholders towards collective action for a sustainable future.
