“I was born and raised in Hyderabad and have lived half my life here. I have also lived in US, UK, Philippines, Indonesia and now based across India and Germany. My journey towards the environment and sustainability started when I was about 18. While studying at BITS Pilani, I realised that I didn’t want to pursue Engineering as a career but wanted to do something towards Human Rights. It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s when I realised that Climate change is the biggest threat to human rights in the 21st century, as what Mary Robinson said. And essentially, I was looking to see what I wanted to do to make a small impact. And at age 23, I went to Antarctica on scholarship with 2041 Foundation. And at that age, I was the youngest Indian woman to have stepped on Antarctica as per all records. That was my first out of two expeditions to Antarctica. On the expedition, I met a lot of people who were creating a positive impact on the environment in unimaginable ways. We started discussing ways to reduce individual emissions and act towards creating a sustainable future.
After I came back from Antarctica, I started learning more about climate change and trying to understand what I can do to the world.
I started working on ways to reduce emissions through my own lifestyle choices as well as working on several international projects related to energy and environment. By age 27, I had traveled to all seven continents. I have helped 2041 set up E-BASE Pench and E-BASE Ladakh using solar-powered energy. I have worked on Policy, technology and finance for Climate.
As a Global Ambassador chosen by Robert Swan (Environmentalist), I have always strived every single day of my life and provided my expertise to people from all over the world to help reduce emissions in a myriad of ways, personally and professionally. I am also proud to have also become part of Global Choices’ Arctic Angel Action Network @Arcticangels, collaborating with young leaders around the world to advocate for the urgent protection of the Polar ice. I’ve scuba dived in the great Great Barrier Reef and Andamans, and polar plugged into the cold frigging waters among icebergs in Antarctica. I have also been lucky to experience hot springs and seen northern lights in Iceland.
And honestly traveling all 7 continents was never on the agenda. I don’t believe in the concept of bucket list. And you will never see me counting countries because I don’t believe in borders. Afterall, they are manmade. Nature doesn’t make borders. So essentially for me, I think travel has been about learning about nature and people. I always say the more I travel, the more I learned how we need the environment more than the planet needs us.
And the other things I have also realised is that everywhere I go people care about their community. People care about their environment and nature. However, there is no collective action. The issue is aways thinking of “me vs you”. Or Shaming and blaming people. And for me,I think the biggest inspiration or motivation I have to keep kind of raising awareness on climate is so that people actually stop the shaming and blaming and actually start working together. We need to look at the climate issues as a collective problem and realise that one person cannot solve this.
Right now, I work in the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, which is the custodian of the Paris Agreement. Its overarching goal is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. So I get to work directly with both governments as well as the private sector to see how they can do better in terms of increasing their renewable energy, increasing their sustainability, and reducing their carbon emissions.
I turned vegan around 15 years ago. It started with love for animals, but the aim to strive for it solidified when i learned that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to climate change. Essentially it is said that almost 50-60 percent of emissions could possibly come just from rising animals for the meat industry and dairy industry. So I would say that the biggest personal contribution to climate change you can do as an individual is to become a vegan.
Through my work at the UN, my current sector of focus is fashion. Very few people realise that among the all industries, fashion is the biggest contributor to pollution, much bigger than aviation and shipping. Just manufacturing clothes and footwear for 8 billion people amounts to 10 percent of the global emissions. And the reason for that is because we don’t realise that every human has clothes – its the basic necessity after food and shelter. So right now, I am working directly with Governments and fashion companies to find ways to reduce their manufacturing emissions.
Talking about Hyderabad, I think one thing that I really like is the green cover that has increased massively from just two decades ago, which is wonderful. I think one thing I would like to change especially, is how we treat our lakes. They are still not clean enough. And I am already working on Lake conservation through an NGO where I am a board member. I am the Environmental Board Advisor at Nirmaanorg and the plan is to help revive the lakes because they are really suffering.
On the occasion of World Nature Conservation Day, my message to everyone is to start looking at what you can do personally. But also see how you can do things collectively. One should look at how they can support the community. That’s what is very important. And I think the best way is to go back to nature and essentially work together to have these simple solutions from composting to just gardening, doing things the ‘right way.’
“The world needs us, and we are the best people to help preserve it.”
- DIVYA NAWALE, Environmentalist