Hello, and welcome to this latest edition of From a Climate Correspondent, a newsletter exploring the climate crisis around the globe.
We are four environmental journalists who have, for various reasons, found ourselves working in regions outside our home continent.
We will be sharing personal reflections on the fight against climate change, highlighting key science and policy developments, and sharing some of the best local and international environmental journalism from the regions where we live – namely Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and South Asia.
Thanks for reading!
From a Climate Correspondent team - India, Jocelyn, Lou and Mat
The children decolonising climate action
Letter no. 9 by Lou Del Bello in Delhi, India
After a video went viral of her sitting in front of the Indian parliament with quiet determination, next to an oversized placard urging the Prime Minister to take action on climate change, eight-year old Licypriya Kangujam quickly became the new face of a movement in India known as the child movement.
Back at school after a year-long break, she took to focusing on her activism. The young climate leader is more determined than ever to make a change at home and abroad , but has reminded journalists who want to tell her story not to call her “the Greta of India,” lest “you are not covering my story. You are deleting a story.”
Dear Media,
Stop calling me “Greta of India”. I am not doing my activism to looks like Greta Thunberg. Yes, she is one of our Inspiration & great influencer. We have common goal but I have my own identity, story. I began my movement since July 2018 even before Greta was started. pic.twitter.com/3UEqCVWYM8— Licypriya Kangujam (@LicypriyaK) January 27, 2020
Today, the youth movement reshaping the way we think about climate change is often referred to as “the Greta effect”. But well before the Swedish teenager started her school strike, children in other corners of the world were taking action against climate change.
Whether it’s ok to reduce such a diverse movement to a single name and face is more than just a semantic debate.
India's unsung heroes
India is home to a small cohort of largely unsung heroes of the climate movement, who are taking a stand at the UN table with other young activists from around the world, but also speak from the perspective of a community that is already bearing the brunt of climate impacts.
While they take part in global climate diplomacy, they are sure not to forget the crisis unfolding at home.
With over a billion citizens living in India, every single one of the changes the children advocate for - from introducing climate change as a compulsory subject in schools to banning single use plastic - has the potential to impact millions of lives. While the youth movement from richer (and sometimes greener) countries is inherently more internationally focused, the Indian children are having a big impact on policy at home.
This is important because the public perception of what a country needs to fight climate change is shaped by the stories we tell, which in turn can play a part in what governments will do about it.
Skewed debate
Take the debate around population, which was recently revived at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Since the seventies, the risk of environmental collapse has been associated with overpopulation. Today, major studies recommend having fewer children if we want to reduce our climate footprint, with a new cliche of Western middle class couples increasingly pondering whether they should stay childfree for the climate’s sake.
However, this innocuous philosophical dilemma quickly acquires sinister undertones when applied to areas of the world such as Africa or India, where population is expected to grow massively in the next 50 years. Not only have these regions contributed the least to climate change, but the struggle for full reproductive rights is still real in countries like India, that still grapples with selective abortion and the legacy of government sponsored mass sterilisation.
Those who still believe that the crux of the problem lies in how many people we are putting on the planet can be accused of forcing a white, western narrative onto a reality it doesn’t belong to. In a way, this is not that dissimilar from what us journalists are doing when we call young climate activists from the developing world “the Greta of ...”, a label that the Swedish schoolgirl herself rejects.
In its diversity, the child movement is reclaiming the uniqueness of every climate tragedy, and the right to have a say in the search for a solution.
Reclaiming the story
In June 2013, the hill state of Uttarakhand suffered one of the worst flooding events in India’s history, where heavy rains swept away homes and infrastructure worth hundreds of million dollars, claiming thousands of lives.
Later studies suggested that the disaster had been made worse by climate change, and years on environmentalists warn that the reconstruction is not keeping weather extremes into account, building on unstable ground that is prone to landslides. As the floods devastated Northern India, the life of a child from the northern city of Dehradun changed forever, albeit not directly due to the disaster.
Ridhima Pandey, then nine years old, became more interested in climate change and frustrated at the government’s lack of action on that front. With the support of her family, in 2017 she filed a petition to the National Green Tribunal, a specialised body that deals with environmental matters, accusing the government of failing to take action against climate change. When the case was dismissed, she escalated it to India’s apex court, where it is still under debate.
Last September, Ridhima was among the 16 young activists who presented an official complaint to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, saying that the Member States’ inaction on climate change represents a violation of child rights. Greta Thunberg was there too, but as all the children (including Greta) remind us, the movement doesn’t revolve around a single personality.
While Ridhima's case will seem to most just a positive message of solidarity, it is a reminder that each child is the face of a unique climate emergency - one that in the case of India and other developing nations is too often erased from the global conversation.
Must reads from the region
This 8-Year-Old Quit School to Become India’s Youngest Climate Change Activist - Meera Navlakha, Vice Meet young Licypriya in this in depth interview where she reveals the face of the child behind the climate leader.
Why we should be wary of blaming ‘overpopulation’ for the climate crisis - Heather Alberro, The Conversation In the face of worsening climate impacts around the world, people are once again asking who is responsible for the catastrophe. It's easy to buy into the overpopulation rhetoric - after all, if there were fewer of us we would use fewer resources. This piece explains why it's not that simple.
How "climate apartheid" divides Delhi - Multiple Authors, The Guardian While temperatures are still mild in Delhi, many are dreading the heatwaves that will soon hit the capital, forcing those who can to retreat on the hills or just live in permanently air conditioned environments. This film learns why during Delhi's scorching summers, once again it's the poor who suffer the most.
What else I've been reading ...
Becoming Ocean: When you and the world are drowning - Eiren Caffal, Al Jazeera One woman shares the story of her life with polycystic kidney disease and sees parallels with the plight of the planet. This is one of the best personal essays on climate change I have ever read. It blends personal and collective grief beautifully, never indulging in any of the genre's stereotypes, from walking in nature to quell anxiety to crying at dinner parties, which have become so ubiquitous. Make sure you watch the beautiful film produced specifically for this piece.
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