Ridhima Pandey is India’s very own Greta Thunberg. Ridhima, who was born in 2007, belongs to Uttarakhand, where extreme weather has caused many deaths due to floods and landslides in the past 10 years. Her father Dinesh Pandey is also a climate change activist working to spread awareness in this field.
In 2016 at age 9, Ridhima filed a petition against the Indian Government before the National Green Tribunal on the issue of environment pollution and how environment protection laws were being routinely flouted in the country. Though the petition was dismissed, it focused the spotlight on the enormity of the climate crisis and caught the attention of national and international media.
In 2019 Ridhima, along with 16 other children, petitioned the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s leading economic powers – Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey – accountable for their inaction on the climate crisis.
She wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2020, about the situation and urged the government to take action. She is a member of the Civil Society and Youth Advisory Council for COP 26 and a popular TEDx speaker.
14-year-old Ridhima has been listed as one of BBC’s ‘Top 100 most Influential Women’ in the world for the year 2020. Her biography ‘Children vs Climate Change’ is a treatise on her fight to save the Earth. She says in the book, “I want to save our future. I want to save the future of all the children and all people of future generations.”
Picture Credit : Google
