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Climate Justice, Equity, and Action | May 29th, 2023 | Pathways School Gurgaon, New Delhi
Join Yashraj, student at Pathways School Gurgaon, as he takes a deep dive into the critical and passionate reponses to the climate crisis that these young activists are making. Yashraj is joined by Abhiir Bhalla, Shivi Anand and Vaibhav Ramani in this Festival of Hope India dialogue.
An active youth environmentalist at a global level, Abhiir Bhalla has been working in the field of environmental conservation for over 8 years. Identified by the BBC World News as amongst the foremost youth environmentalists in 2020, Abhiir and his work have been featured prominently in the national and international media. As a sustainability consultant, his work focuses on air pollution and waste segregation, and he is currently producing the climate change podcast, ‘Candid Climate Conversations’. He’s been a three-time TEDx Speaker and is also a Youth Ambassador for Earth Day International. He was identified as a ‘Climate Warrior’ by UNICEF and UNEP India from his project ‘Swachh Chetna’, where he brought together private, public and NGO schools to conduct cleanliness, awareness, and plantation drives with the Delhi Metro as a partner.
Shivi Anand hopes to work on the intersection of environment, spatial data science and international development! The topics she is especially interested in include sustainable development, technology and the environment, energy security, the new green revolution (food and farming), transportation, sustainable city design, designed ecology, refugees, crisis management, and natural disaster. The sectors she is interested in are ESG and consulting in the private sector, sustainability, economics and data management in the intergovernmental sector, and research in higher education.
Vaibhav Ramani is a PhD research scholar with the Department of History, Ashoka University. His interests are in the history of forestry, hunting and plantations of the Nilgiris District in present day Tamil Nadu. Since 2019, he has been volunteering regularly with the Students Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN), an organization that has been monitoring the coasts of Chennai city since 1987. The organisation’s volunteers walk every night on a roughly 13–15-kilometer stretch across two beaches (The Marina beach and Elliot's beach) during the Olive Ridley's (one of the seven Sea Turtle species of the world) nesting season. Volunteering has two main components in this larger exercise of sea turtle conservation. One involves regular walking and relocation of nests every night and the other involves periodical monitoring of the hatchery. Since 2019 he has been volunteering in both these capacities.
