Time - USA (2022-01-31)

18 TIME January 31/February 7, 2022

‘Change

can be

created

on large

levels, even

with small

actions.’

SAGARIKA SRIRAM

ENVIRONMENT

A teen eco-warrior

cleans up her city

BY MELANIE SWAN

rising temperatures and dwindling

water supplies made Sriram acutely

aware of the need for action. She be-

lieves youth advocacy work is eff ective

in bringing needed attention to the

challenges the UAE and neighboring

countries face. “When children spread

a message, and you go door-to-door

telling people about this, they tend to

understand what’s going on,” she says.

Even if she’s all about small ac-

tions, Sriram has big plans herself.

She has an aim to expand globally and

create an “international team of eco-

warriors,” as she puts it. Moreover, she

hopes that the work she’s doing will

inspire others to fi ght for a greener

planet, as others have inspired her.

“We’re creating our own system of in-

spirational changemakers,” she says.

SAGARIKA SRIRAM WAS JUST 10 YEARS OLD WHEN SHE
started reading newspaper stories about a planet in peril—
one about a whale that washed ashore after an oil spill,
another about turtles found with plastic in their stomachs.
She knew right then that she wanted to do something
to take action, and joined an environmental group that
organized cleanup campaigns in her home city of Dubai.
The experience, she says, “helped me understand what an
individual can do and how I can really make a diff erence.”
But individual power is mightiest at scale, and in 2016, as a
project for a coding class, Sriram created Kids for a Better
World, a digital platform that has since brought together
nearly 100,000 youths from around the world who want to
learn how they, too, can fi ght climate change.
Sriram, now 16, has been called “an inspiration to all
young girls in her country and West Asia” by the U.N.
Environment Programme. She is at the fore of a growing
cohort of youth climate activists organizing and mobilizing
online in the name of a cleaner, healthier future. “We’re
the generation that is going to face the consequences if
the climate crisis is not tackled,” Sriram says, echoing
the sentiment of other young global climate leaders, like
Sweden’s Greta Thunberg. She recalls taking note of Bali’s
Melati Wijsen, a teenager who successfully pressured
leaders there to ban plastic bags in 2019. “Such inspirational
and drastic change like that is what taught me to never
give up,” says Sriram, who works closely with other youth
activists and organizations across the Middle East.
As well as online engagement, Sriram organizes local
cleanups on beaches and deserts in the United Arab
Emirates, collecting garbage such as cigarette butts and face
masks. The pandemic has made it “a little more complicated
to conduct these events,” she says, but we’ve suggested
that people can go on their own in their own little groups of
families and make an impact.”

SLOWING CLIMATE CHANGE requires drastic action on
the part of governments and corporations, but Sriram be-
lieves individual actions can create a “ripple eff ect” and
help build momentum in the right direction. “Change can
be created on large levels, even with small actions,” she
says. Kids for a Better World refl ects that thinking, with
material designed to teach kids ages 8 to 16 about climate
change and what they can do in their own homes and com-
munities to reverse it (grow food or plant trees at home, for
instance, or collect recyclables and avoid plastic bags). Sri-
ram wants those lessons to be taught in schools around the
world. “Education is the foundation of what we learn, and
we spend so much time in school,” she says, “so this is the
information which can help change our future.”
Growing up in a desert metropolis that faces risks from

TIME’s Destination Dubai series is presented by

△

Sriram,

photographed on

Dec. 29, works with

climate-change

activists across the

Middle East

See the video at time.com/DestinationDubai

THE BRIEF

NATALIE NACCACHE FOR TIME