13-yr-old to address UN climate meet

Yugratna Srivastava, a ninth standard student, will create history when she addresses top world leaders on Tuesday at the Climate Change Summit convened by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in New York.

Among the audience will be US president Barrack Obama along with other top leaders of different countries. Yugratna will try to impress upon the world leaders to take immediate steps to solve environmental issues affecting the world today, said her father Dr. Alok Srivastava, while speaking to Deccan Herald here on Monday.

The young environmentalist  was always concerned about environmental issues and has been actively involved with a leading NGO ‘Taru Mitra’, Srivastava, who is a Reader in Botany at a government college, said.

“She used to collect media reports and clippings on environmental issues when she was a child,” he said. In 2008, Yugratna had visited Norway to take part in an International Children Conference where also she had delivered a speech, followed by another visit to Nairobi to take part in a meet on Climate Change, he said.

Her speech was highly appreciated by the audience in  Norway. Yugratna has also been a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Youth Board. Although it may appear that Yugratna’s favourite subject is environment yet the reality is different. “She wants to pursue astronomical engineering,” Srivastava pointed out.

Srivastava attributes her single daughter’s feat to her mother Dr Roshni Srivastava and her teachers at St Fidelis School. “World leaders must recognise the energy and potential which lies in children and youth. This age group is just like flowing rivers and they make their own way in the direction in which they march,” said Yugratna, a lively, committed and very passionate teenager.

Yugratna became sensitised to environmental protection in Grade 6 in St Francis School in Shamli, India. It was there that she joined “Tarumitra” (Friends of Trees). In 2008 Yugratna participated in the Tunza youth conference in Norway organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and became a member of the Junior Board. Tunza is the UNEP magazine for youth.