Licypriya Kangujam has a dream: that all the children of the world have good air to breathe, healthy water to drink, a clean planet to live on. Not just a dream given the society in which we live and given, above all, the part of the world, India, where this 12-year-old activist lives who has been fighting for climate change since he was six years old.
Licypriya Kangujam: I’m not the Indian Greta
Kangujam became known all over the world after taking part in the last one COP25 UN climate conference in Madrid together with Greta Thunberg. She is her friend but Kangujam doesn’t like the comparison with the Swedish “colleague”.
“So don’t tell my story,” he wrote on Twitter. Because she clearly «she is a role model for me and we have a common goal» she added «but I have my own identity. And I started even before her».
Licypriya Kangujam when she was only 9 years old and already demonstrating in front of the New Delhi Parliament against air pollution (Photo by Prakash SINGH / AFP) (Photo by PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images)
Without embarrassment in front of world leaders
The young woman lives in the northeastern state of Manipur and her mission for the climate got underway after participating with her father in a conference on disasters organized by the UN in Mongolia.
“Seeing children lose their parents or be left homeless by natural disasters has changed my life,” she said. told the BBC.
Licypriya Kangujam, the youngest speaker at the UN
He spoke without any embarrassment or discomfort to world leaders gathered to discuss climate change, insisting on the importance of acting as soon as possible in the face of what is “a real climate emergency” and becoming the youngest speaker ever to speak at the UN.
Many concrete awards received. Three in 2019 alone: the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Children AwardThe World Children Peace Prize and theIndia Peace Prize.
Climate lessons at school: successful battle
One of his most important battles is the demand that lessons on climate change become a compulsory subject in schools. Request for which he established the Child movement. So far, thanks to his battle, Rajasthan is the first state to introduce school lessons in environmental education and soon Gujarat will too.
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