With the specter of global warming hanging over us and the ever-changing climate system displacing millions of people and exterminating wildlife, India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter, pledges to comply: It must reduce its carbon footprint from 2005 levels33 -35% Nine years later, that is, by 2030, in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Meeting the challenge but working silently under the radar is a group of young people in India. In the preparatory phase of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the United Nations selected 18 young men and women to launch a climate campaign called "We Change" in India. These people are between 18 and 33 years old, and their work ranges from saving water in restaurants to saving olive sea turtles from trawlers, from turning factory waste into fashion items, to using community broadcasts to spread awareness in the local dialect . This is their story.
In 2015, India is facing one of the worst droughts in history. Garvita Gulhati is 15 years old. Around this time, the Bangalore student learned an amazing number: restaurants in the world waste no less than 14 million liters of water every year, which is left in the drinking glasses on the dining table. She said: "When I saw this number in the context of women who walked several kilometers for a pot of water every day, I was moved." The 22-year-old Gulhati initiated "Why waste?" a project aimed at creating "positive Water environment" and a movement to change attitudes towards resources. She promoted the #GlassHalfFull concept, in which the location card encourages customers to fill only half of their glasses, or use only the amount they need. Today, Gulhatti, known as the "Water Girl of India," has saved more than 10 million liters of water in 500,000 restaurants in her six years.
Nala means drainage. But when Sneha Shahi decided to study the Bhuki nala passing through her university campus, she realized that the sewer was actually a natural stream blocked by plastic. Shahi, 24, belongs to the UNEP Plastic Tide Turner Movement. He mobilized 300 volunteers to remove nearly 700 kg of solid waste from the Buki River and its banks: thermos, plastic bottles, potato chip bags, industry and construction Rubbish. The result is more valuable than she expected. Turtles and crocodiles returned to the stream, and plants sprouted new shoots on the banks of the river. Encouraged by the success, Shahi worked with a group of students to map the urban streams in Vadodara where she lives, no matter how small they are. Shahi then launched a multilingual outreach program to "people understand more about water bodies and the connections between them," the young man said.
Factory waste. This is the material used by Delhi-based clothing designer Kriti Tula. Tula, 33, is the creative director of sustainable fashion brand Doodlage, which uses a no-waste concept to upgrade the recycling and repair of fabric waste generated by manufacturing units to make new clothes. Tula can be used for everything: waste cloth scraps, fabric at the end of the production line, and defective waste. She also uses bamboo, eucalyptus, and corn fabrics to encourage sustainable fibers. "Considering the huge environmental costs of fast fashion-from water-consuming cotton crops to unsustainable levels of cloth production-this can make a big difference," Tula said. In fact, upgrading recycling and recycling is rooted in India, where Tula believes that old clothes can always gain new life, but this trend is fading.
30-year-old Ganesh Kumar Subramanian is an engineer and co-founder of Kabadiwalla Connect, a social enterprise based in Chennai that uses workers in the informal sector to provide decentralized waste management solutions. The organization uses scavengers and scrap shops to move paper, plastic, glass, and metal waste from landfills to the recycling supply chain. As part of its project, the organization has set up smart trash cans that can be pinged when the scrap shop is full. Scavengers then collect, sort and resell the waste to scrap shops. "Our idea is to incorporate the informal sector into the formal waste management system to increase recycling rates while improving the lives of marginalized stakeholders," Subramanian said.
Aditya Mukarji, a 16-year-old Delhi student, decided to go door-to-door as his mission and opposed what he called "one of the most dangerous inventions of mankind": disposable plastic. In the next two years, Mukalji, now 18, has stopped using more than 26 million disposable plastic products-plastic straws, plastic tableware and blenders-in hotels and restaurants. He said he started in the hotel industry and then expanded to corporate companies and movie theaters. "For example, for customers who insist on using straws, I will organize environmentally friendly straws made of paper, bamboo and metal," Mukagi said. He even made sure that the agency he worked with gave him a list of the single-use plastic items they had stopped buying.
Neha Shivaji Naikwade, 27, now lives in Jalna, Maharashtra, and is the co-founder of Parvaah, a youth organization focusing on zero waste initiatives. Naikwade said that she started with her own family, where 100% of the waste generated there is treated, and she has switched to renewable energy. "In order to control global warming below 1.5 degrees, every sector of the global economy needs to undergo transformation in a little more than two business cycles," said the young activist. At the Climate Collective Foundation where she works, one of the projects she now leads is UNDP Youth Co:Lab, which supports 50 young climate entrepreneurs in waste management, sustainable transportation, tourism and food technology.
Soumya Ranjan Biswal spends most of his time patrolling the beach, picking up rubbish at the olive tree turtle nesting site at the mouth of the Devi River in Odisha, something he has been doing since he was 10 years old. Now 24 years old, Biswal is committed to protecting hundreds of sea turtles nesting here and in local communities every year to help reduce trawling during the nesting season. "I collect mortality data, find out the cause of death, and regularly share the latest news on the forum," Biswal said. Happily, illegal trawler activities have been greatly reduced, he said. Biswal's work extends to protecting the biodiversity of Astaranga Village in Puri District, where he organized more than 200 beach cleaning activities and removed tons of plastic waste and discarded fishing nets from the coast.
One of the first projects of environmental activist Akhilesh Anil Kumar was to curb erosion along the coast of Thiruvananthapuram and reduce its impact on the community. When he went to the affected area and talked with people there, he realized that one of the main reasons for the erosion was that the area was building an international seaport. 21-year-old Kumar is the founder of Bring Back Green Foundation. He also participated in innovative proposals for the implementation of Kerala’s blue economy, covering coastal community revitalization, prevention of marine oil spill risks, marine ecological disaster warning and marine aquaculture pollution control . "We are very pleased to know that our team's suggestions or objections regarding the blue economy were included in the draft submitted to the center by the state government," Kumar said.
Also in Kerala, 29-year-old Sanju Soman started his career, promoting rainwater harvesting. Recently, Soman and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment created the first model "Wetland Village". He liaised with local communities to protect Vembanad Lake and help promote sustainable fishing and clam collection. The lake is a Ramsar wetland, threatened by tourism growth, agricultural runoff and farmland reclamation. "Community-led participatory protection is the best way to protect critical ecosystems," Soman said. "The scientific community and the government only need to provide the necessary tools."
The 27-year-old Mumbai city planner Berjis Driver is committed to strengthening the relationship between people, architecture and the environment. He wrote reports and recommendations for the public open space in Mumbai and the urban design of the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority. This year, as a city consultant, he participated in the data analysis and documentation of the Candela Special Economic Zone in Gujarat. This is the first green special economic zone to receive IGBC's existing urban green city platinum rating, which recognizes the city’s environmental sustainability .
Medha Priya, 26, is an architect and interaction designer in Jaipur: she is dedicated to the physical interaction between people and architectural spaces, and the digital interaction between people and screens. One of her projects involved green building certification for Dhaka Garment Factory. As a sustainability consultant, Medha reviewed the construction quality, adequate ventilation, green spaces and compliance with construction codes of these buildings. "These strategies will help create a safer working environment, especially for women who make up the majority of the workforce," she said.
Medha was part of the team that designed the 200-acre university campus of IIM Visakhapatnam, which aspires to obtain GRIHA certification, the highest rating for green buildings in India.
Heeta Lakhani, a 30-year-old climate educator in Mumbai, said her turning point was when she participated in COP21 in Paris in 2015. Since then, she has been working with school students and YOUNGO, the official youth constituency of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). ). For the past two years, she has been working on a global youth statement to be submitted to the UNFCCC.
"We are working hard to get a youth delegation to participate in COP26," Rahani said. "This will be the largest ever delegation of members under the age of 35 to join this space where negotiations are underway." Four years ago, Rakani launched the Green Warrior to educate students about climate change.
As a female student of Meerut, Hina Saifi was inspired by science class and started to engage in environmental protection activities. Saifi, 20, now hopes to “incentivize people in Uttar Pradesh to adopt clean energy, which can increase employment and reduce energy costs and pollution.” Through the Suraj Se Samriddhi event, Saifi raises people’s awareness through public meetings, distribution of brochures and door-to-door visits. Understanding the benefits of solar energy (solar pumps or rooftop solar installations). She is now associated with En Bloc: On Way to Humanity, a non-governmental organization dedicated to emphasizing the issues of marginalized communities, whether it is education, gender or labor rights.
Storytelling through community radio is a way for Varsha Raikwar (the first non-agricultural woman in her family) to raise people’s climate awareness in Madya Pradesh Bundelkhand. "As a radio reporter for Radio Bundelkhand 90.4 FM, which broadcasts to more than 200 villages in four drought-affected areas in Bundelkhand, I talk about how the people most affected by climate change can make an impact by adopting sustainable practices." Said the 27-year-old young man. A show centered on a character named Bairo Bhauji, using ultra-local dialects and light anecdotes to talk about environmental protection issues.
Archana Soreng, 26, from the Kharia tribe in Orissa, was selected as one of the seven members of the UN Secretary-General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. Soreng has been working with tribal communities and forest dwellers, and has also participated in a project called Adivasi Drishyam, which produces videos about indigenous songs and medicines. "We firmly believe that it is important to document these practices and record them in different formats so that people with no formal education can access them," Soreng said.
Sarath KR, a 27-year-old folk art enthusiast, worked with the Vayali Folklore group, a community-led initiative that participated in a number of activities, including restoring the vitality of the Balatapuza River in Kerala, which has been reduced to Trickle. Alter-School, a branch of Wayali co-founded by Salas, organized a camp for local children to raise awareness of the need to keep Bharathapuzha clean. “We visit the river with the children and let them observe. They cross the polluted river, come back to play games, share their observations, visit government offices as part of the drama mission, and start role-playing,” he said.
Siddhartha Sharma introduced the concept of climate change for the first time in college. Sharma, 27, focuses on the hydrology of the Yarlung Zangbo River. Mahabahu is the flagship project of the Global Shapers Guwahati Hub he founded to help people affected by floods in Morigaon, Barpeta and Kamrup areas in Assam. Sharma said: “At the peak of the flooding in Assam in 2020, the project has begun to take shape and has so far supported more than 12,000 people.” “Due to the pandemic, logistics is a huge challenge, but our partners are non-governmental Organizations, local communities and regional governments are very supportive."
In 2013, a severe drought caused unspeakable misfortune to Nidhi Pant's hometown, and even her family was forced to relocate. This determines her career. The 27-year-old chemical engineer, farmer, and entrepreneur co-founded the S4S (Social Science) technology in Mumbai, which works with low-income, climate-threatened communities and helps them use machines and technology to dehydrate and sell Otherwise it will deteriorate the product. For example, they have energy-efficient machines for drying ginger, turmeric and cassava, and another for making vegetable chips. "S4S has changed the lives of female farmers by ensuring food security, increasing income and creating jobs," Panthe said.
Bindu is a freelance writer and photographer from Bangalore.
divya.gandhi@thehindu.co.in
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