Become a Climate Champion
Join young climate champions Prakriti, Biju, Tuli and FrisBee in their fight against climate change
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Climate change is real... We must act now!
The climate crisis is here and getting worse each year. The world continues to get warmer at an alarming rate, putting almost every child at risk of more frequent and destructive climate hazards – air pollution, cyclones, disease, flooding, heatwaves and water scarcity.
As these hazards continue to intensify, more children will be harmed; more will die. These crisis will not affect everyone equally. Children will suffer more than adults, with those in the poorest communities bearing the biggest burden.
Over 1 billion children are at extremely high risk of severe and destructive climate hazards.
In India, extreme weather events like cyclones and floods destroy infrastructure, including homes, schools, and healthcare facilities. For example, in mid-July 2020, floods in India affected 2.4 million children and young people (and a total of over 6 million people) in 10 states (UNICEF, 2020), leading to diseases such as cholera or diarrhoea, which is still a leading killer of children and young people worldwide.
Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns, drought, water stress and growing water demands reduce the amount of safe drinking water for children and either expose the children to health risks or cause households to migrate.
Poor air quality and pollution adversely affect children's health and cause death. Children breathe twice as quickly as adults and are more vulnerable to air pollution than adults.
For safeguarding children—especially the most vulnerable—a substantial increase in financing is required. Funding for adaptation must be scaled-up, especially for the essential social services the children rely on.
#MissionLiFE
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, in partnership with UNICEF and YuWaah (Generation Unlimited India), has launched a new climate action campaign to raise awareness about the greatest threat to this generation and generations to come.
The campaign seeks to create an ecosystem that will reinforce and enable environmentally friendly behaviour to be self-sustainable and link up with the Mission LiFE campaign launched by the Prime Minister of India and the UN Secretary-General last year.
Join young climate champions Prakriti, Biju, Tuli and their friend Frisbee in their fight against climate change.
- Raise awareness of how climate change is affecting our environment
- Encourage your friends and family to spread messages on tackling climate change
- Take action through the MeriLiFE App.
Meet our amazing Climate Champions
UNICEF
UNICEF
Prakriti
‘Prakriti’ is mascot to spread awareness among people about the small changes that can be adopted in day-to-day life to reduce the use of plastic and facilitate a better environment for future generations.
UNICEF
Biju
A ten-year-old, playful, and curious boy who has migrated from a flood-prone village. He draws his messages around climate change on small pieces of paper, turns them into paper planes, and throws them to attract people's attention to climate change.
UNICEF
Tuli
A close friend of Biju, the 15-year-old girl, lives in a metro. Witty aware of her rights and genuinely cares about the environment. A big believer in social media's power to influence positive change around environmental conservation, she represents a group that is aware of climate change and eager to act.
UNICEF
FrisBee
A honeybee and a metaphorical representation of every living non-human being that plays an important role in maintaining the ecosystem. FrisBee keeps buzzing to raise the alarm on the wrong behaviours and applauds positive action done by people to save the planet.
Without action, climate change will exacerbate children's inequalities, and future generations will suffer. Poorer families have a harder time coping with shocks. The most vulnerable are already losing their homes, health and education. As climate change makes crises more common, it becomes harder to recover from them.
Our amazing Climate Champion Videos
What is UNICEF doing in India to respond to the climate crisis?
Young people are essential to climate action. They have the passion/drive, critical skills, experiences and ideas for safer, more sustainable societies. They will be living with the impacts of climate change and have the right to participate in decisions that affect their future.
UNICEF works with partners at global and local levels to ensure that children can live in a safe and clean environment. Our actions are structured around four approaches which involve making children the centre of climate change strategies and response plans and recognizing children as agents of change.
We aim at protecting children from the impact of climate change and environmental degradation and reducing emissions and pollution
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Video Stories of Climate Change
Beneath the sprawling canopy of a 'khejri' (Spunge) tree in Kanasar village, in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, a group of women adorned in vibrant attire sing a heartfelt song about water and its significance.
As far as the eye can reach this limitless rocky terrain, the vast expanse of Barki village, perched atop a mountain, is devoid of any dense vegetation despite being locally called ‘daang’ (a forest area).
For years, they have been the first to rise and the last to rest. Walking long distances to fetch water for their families, women in the tribal hills of Udaipur, Rajasthan, carried the burden of water scarcity every single day. Today, however, they carry a confident smile as they pose for a selfie in their lush green fields.
Amid Rajasthan's water scarcity, dry spells, and uncertain rains, Kotri, a tribal village, stands apart with a reliable sense of water security. This village was once dependent on just 21 handpumps, which often ran dry and showed turbidity and contamination. Today, Kotri models sustainable, community-led water governance.
Imagine a road that doesn’t just connect a child to school, a mother to healthcare, or a family to their home, but also carries a bold vision. A vision where plastic waste, once clogging rivers and littered across the pavements, is paving the way, literally.
Forty-two-year-old Dawa Sherpa once stared at his parched fields in the misty hills of Darjeeling with big dreams in his eyes: fields overflowing with tomatoes, beans, and chillies, which would be enough for his family with surplus produce for the local Anganwadi centre/creche facility.
On a bright February morning in Tarabori village, Morigaon district, ninth-grader Abhijit Patar noticed his uncle using the newly installed Piped Water Supply to wash his bike. Without hesitation, he intervened, explaining,
