(April 21, 2023) At COP27 in Egypt, 11-year-old Indian climate activist Licypriya Kangujam had an iconic moment when she determinedly questioned UK’s climate minister Zac Goldsmith about the climate activists who were detained in the United Kingdom following protests against environment policies. This sudden confrontation made headlines, and Licypriya was praised for standing up to world leaders and asking pertinent questions.
She might be just 11 but Licypriya has been raising her voice against the climate crisis since she was six. Hailing from Manipur, she saw the devastating effects of cyclones like Fani and Titli in Bhubaneswar at a young age, and this prompted her to take up climate activism. In few years, she has become one of the leading faces in the world of child climate activists, and the girl is not ready to stop anytime soon.
Licypriya Kangujam
Born in the carbon-negative state of Manipur, Licypriya’s relocation to Bhubaneswar triggered her interest in climate change at a young age after she witnessed the destruction caused by two devastating cyclones Titli in 2018 and Fani in 2019, when they hit the eastern coastal region. “Many people lost their lives. Many children lost their parents and many people became homeless,” she said during a TedTalk, adding that she couldn’t sleep or eat for days. This emotion was exacerbated when she moved to Delhi a year later, as her life was completely “messed up” owing to the air pollution and heat wave crisis. All these incidents prompted her to become a child climate activist.
But it was as young as five, that she first heard the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘natural disasters’ while accompanying her dad to raise funds for the Nepal earthquake 2015 victims that made her concerned about the environment. However, she refers to the United Nations Disaster Conference in Mongolia in July 2018 as a “life-changing event” as it made her start her own organisation The Child Movement at the age of six, to call on world leaders to take immediate climate action to save the planet. Over the years, it has become a people’s movement for climate justice in India and abroad. “I travelled to over 32 countries as a part of my movement and spoke in more than 400 institutions on climate change,” she said.
In February 2019, she protested outside the Parliament in the capital demanding three things – to pass the climate change law in the parliament as soon as possible, to make climate education compulsory in every school in India, and to ensure plantations of minimum of 10 trees by every student in India. Her efforts yielded result as Gujarat and Rajasthan have made climate change a compulsory subject in the school education curriculum, thus making India the second country after Italy to do so. “Climate education is very important if we really would like to fight the climate crisis. Adults are not doing enough already, and I don’t have much faith in them to come to the frontline and save our planet and future. The last hope is children. If we include climate education in schools, then we can fight climate change from the grassroots,” she told the Harvard International Review.
The sixth grader at Ryan International School also encourages youngsters to plant more trees through her initiative Monday for Mother Nature that will help India become green in the next five-ten years. ” India has over 350 million students. If they all plant a minimum of 10 trees every year, then we will plant 3.5 billion trees,” she added.
Licypriya, who urged the world leaders to act on climate change at COP 25 in Spain, made headlines during the COP27 in Egypt when she confronted UK climate minister on the release of climate activists who are in prison because of protesting against oil and gas licenses across the UK. In an interview with WION, Licypriya said, “Instead of answering my question, he ran away but I followed him for a couple of minutes and repeatedly asked him the same question. Later he told me that he had no idea about it and that he can’t do anything.”
However, this Global Indian is unfazed by these snubs, and continues to raise her voice asking for world leader to act. The girl, who likes to swim, paint and watch her favourite cartoon, Doraemon, in her free time, never misses a chance to accept invitations to speak at schools and conferences about climate change. Though she is only 11, she thinks age is just a number. “Many people told me that I’m too young to get involved in such activism, but … I strongly believe that children can lead the change. We need to keep speaking up about the climate crisis and … to hold lawmakers accountable for their political decisions,” she told Washington Post.
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