In India, every year, the summers are getting longer, the winters harsher and the downpours intense. With Assam floods and Tamil Nadu drought, the growing problem of water scarcity in many states is no longer an abnormality, but the new reality! There is an urgency to solve the problems caused by human-induced climate change and to understand and find solutions before it is late.
This is Climate Emergency, a podcast hosted by Rakesh Kamal, an environmentalist and a climate leader. Climate Emergency brings to the fore the growing impact of climate change and highlights and celebrates climate champions—individuals and communities who are undoing the damage done so far.
Even before Greta Thunberg started the school strike for climate, Ridhima Pandey, a native of Uttarakhand, filed her first petition when she was nine against the Indian government in the National Green Tribunal. In this petition, she stated that the Indian government should take effective, science-based action to reduce and minimise the adverse impacts of climate change.
This episode of Climate Emergency features Ridhima who, along with fifteen other children from all over the world, have come together to file a petition against five countries who have failed to uphold their end of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most ratified human rights treaty in the world.
“When I came to know about all this, the fact that if global warming keeps increasing like this, we will have a very bad effect on our future. And, when I researched, I found out it is us humans who are the main reason for the increase in global warming. Our activities are causing this phenomenon, and if this keeps on increasing, we might not have a future. At that time I realized I should do something for my future because I want to live and I want all kids to have a good life, all have a good climate as I feel it is our right.
We have the right to live in a good atmosphere, have good water, these are our rights as I want to fight for a good future. So I asked my father is there something we can do? He said we could file a case if I want too. At that time, I thought that I wanted to do this as I wanted to have a good future. So I filed a case in the national green tribunal in 2017 when I was in 4th standard,” says Ridhima.
Ridhima shares her journey in this episode and tells us how she got interested in climate change and how she got the idea of filing a case first. This episode also features voices of Riddhima’s father and the lawyer of this case who tells what he hopes to achieve.
You can listen to our full episode here.