The Earth Knows Their Names

1. Purnima Devi Barman, Assam, India

SDG 15 (Life on Land) | SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)

A wildlife biologist who turned a community into a conservation force, Purnima Devi Barman has spent over two decades working to save the Greater Adjutant Stork, a bird so large and ungainly that locals once considered it a bad omen. Her response was to change the story entirely. She built the Hargila Army, a network of over 20,000 women across Assam’s wetlands who protect nesting trees, rescue injured birds, and have woven the stork into their cultural identity, embroidering it onto gamosas and performing songs in its honour. Under her watch, the stork’s population has quadrupled and its IUCN status upgraded from endangered to near threatened. Purnima is the recipient of the UN Champion of the Earth award, the Whitley Gold Award and the Nari Shakti Puraskar, the highest civilian award for Indian women. She is a shining example of what persistence and sisterhood can achieve!

2. Prerna Singh Bindra, India

SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 15 (Life on Land)

Ask any wildlife journalist in India who has been at the forefront of keeping the tiger, the elephant and indeed India’s forests alive in the public imagination, and Prerna Singh Bindra’s name will come up right up there at the top. A former member of the National Board for Wildlife, she has spent two decades writing, lobbying, and agitating to protect forests from highways, railways, and hydel projects. Her book The Vanishing: India’s Wildlife Crisis is both gripping and urgent. She has also been one of the clearest voices on the link between healthy forests and a stable climate, a connection that should be obvious but still needs reiterating again and again in the right rooms.

“The choice is ours to make: Will we stand by silent, and watch the forests fall? Watch as wild creatures fall off the map of India? This is a rallying call — we can save this beautiful world if we start now.” — Prerna Singh Bindra

3. Krishnammal Jagannathan, Tamil Nadu, India

SDG 1 (No Poverty) | SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) | SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 15 (Life on Land)

Now in her nineties, Krishnammal Jagannathan, born in a landless Dalit family, is a Gandhian activist from Tamil Nadu who has spent her life fighting for landless Dalit farmers and coastal fishing communities along the Cauvery and India’s southeastern shore. With her husband, she founded an organisation called Land for the Tillers’ Freedom that redistributed land to 13,000 Dalit women. The recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, Krishnamma, who was an associate of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave and once hosted Dr Martin Luther King in her ashram, has stood firm against large-scale prawn aquaculture that destroys coastal ecosystems and displaces fishing families who have lived there for generations. Her life is a reminder that climate justice and land justice have always been the same fight, and that some women have been waging it long before it had a name!

“I sincerely believe that ‘everything is possible’ when policies for sustainable development reflect people-participation, ethical-science, and right-action.” — Krishnammal Jagannathan

4. Dayamani Barla, Jharkhand, India

SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 15 (Life on Land) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

A journalist and activist from the Munda tribe in Jharkhand, Dayamani Barla, is one of the most clear-eyed voices in India on what happens to Adivasi land and forests when mining companies arrive. She helped stop a massive steel plant in the ecologically critical Koel-Karo valley by mobilising tribal communities to resist displacement and the destruction of their ancestral land. She later stood for election as an independent candidate on a platform of forest and land rights, and brought that fight into democratic spaces.

“The forest is not just trees. It is our water, our food, our medicine, our memory. When you destroy the forest, you destroy us, and you destroy the lungs of this country. The Adivasi people have been its guardians for generations. We are not asking for charity. We are asking you to stop taking what was never yours.” — Dayamani Barla

5. Nemonte Nenquimo, Ecuador

SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 15 (Life on Land) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

In 2019, Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, led her community to a landmark legal victory that protected half a million acres of Amazon rainforest from oil drilling. A Goldman Prize winner and one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, she has said clearly and repeatedly: this land belongs to the people who have lived on it for centuries, and it is not for sale. In a world where corporate interests routinely undermine indigenous rights, her victory was a landmark and an inspiration for many.

“My forest has been standing for millennia. My people have been living in it and protecting it for millennia. And we will continue to do so, with our lives if necessary.” — Nemonte Nenquimo

6. Wanjira Mathai, Kenya

SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 15 (Life on Land) | SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)

The daughter of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, Wanjira is a formidable force in her own right. Managing Director at the World Resources Institute Africa, she carries her mother’s legacy of connecting protecting trees to freedom, dignity, and democracy, taking it further into the policy rooms where global decisions are being made. She leads the Restore Local project, advancing forest protection and landscape restoration across the continent, and has been one of the most powerful voices on the disproportionate climate burdens borne by Africa.

7. Bhavreen Kandhari, Delhi, India

SDG 3 (Good Health & Well-being) | SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities & Communities) | SDG 13 (Climate Action)

If air quality had a human face in India, it would be Bhavreen Kandhari’s! A former copywriter and mother of twin daughters, who were both born premature with damaged lungs from Delhi’s toxic air, Bhavreen co-founded Warrior Moms, a nationwide movement of mothers demanding clean air and accountability from governments and polluters. What started with a WhatsApp message in November 2016, when Delhi choked under record smog, and schools were shut for the first time in history, has grown into a legal and grassroots force that fights waste-to-energy plants, illegal tree felling, and lax enforcement of pollution norms. Bhavreen has taken the battle to courts, to Parliament, and to UN climate summits, where she speaks on behalf of parent-led climate groups worldwide. Every third child in Delhi has damaged lungs. She is holding the power to account, and making sure no one can claim they didn’t know.

“I’ve fought for clean air even before my children were born, and still managed to give them damaged lungs. Thirty per cent less pollution still means poison. Are you saying ‘less poison’ is acceptable?” — Bhavreen Kandhari

8. Angela Rangad, Meghalaya, India

SDG 6 (Clean Water & Sanitation) | SDG 15 (Life on Land) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

From Meghalaya, Angela Rangad has been one of the loudest voices against the illegal coal mining that has devastated the state’s rivers, turning them an acidic black and killing the fish populations that rural and tribal communities have depended on for generations. A Khasi activist and co-founder of the Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR) platform, Angela speaks from a community where the land is sacred, and the rivers are kin, not resources. She has been raising the alarm for years about environmental destruction in a part of India that often goes unnoticed in the national media.

“Our rivers are dying because of greed. The coal is extracted, the owners make their money, and our people are left drinking acid. This is not development. This is destruction, and the communities here are paying for it with their health, their livelihoods, and their children’s future.” — Angela Rangad

9. Anita Ahuja, Delhi, India

SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production) | SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth)

In the back lanes of Delhi, where rag pickers, mostly women, sort through the city’s mountains of discarded plastic, Anita Ahuja saw not waste but raw material. As co-founder of Conserve India, she pioneered a process that upcycles plastic bags into a durable, flexible material, a patented innovation called ‘Handmade recycled plastic’ (HRP), which is then crafted into bags, accessories, and homewares by the same communities who collected it and exported around the world. Over two decades, Conserve India has not only diverted millions of plastic bags from landfills, it has also put economic power into the hands of women who had previously been invisible to both industry and policymakers.

“The rag pickers were already doing the most important recycling work in the city. All we did was give their labour the value it deserved, and turn a problem into a product that the world actually wants.” — Anita Ahuja

10. Maxine Bédat, New York, USA

SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production) | SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth)

A lawyer turned fashion investigator, Maxine Bédat is the founder of the New Standard Institute, a research and advocacy organisation focused on the fashion industry’s supply chain. Her book Unraveled: The Life and Death of a Garment follows a single pair of jeans from cotton field to factory to shop floor to landfill, and in doing so makes the true cost of fast fashion real and undeniable. Maxine has been a tireless advocate for legislation that holds brands accountable for who made them and at what cost to the planet and people.

11. Rashida Bee, Bhopal, India

SDG 3 (Good Health & Well-being) | SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

If you want to understand the long tail of environmental injustice, listen to Rashida Bee. A survivor of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, one of the worst industrial catastrophes in human history in which she lost six of her family members, Rashida Bee went on to co-found the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh and became one of the most prominent faces of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. In 2004, she and her co-campaigner Champa Devi Shukla received the Goldman Environmental Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of grassroots environmental work. Rashida didn’t choose activism. She was thrust into it when the gas clouds descended on her neighbourhood, and the government looked away. She continues to lead the Chingari Trust, which provides rehabilitation, medical care, and education to children born with physical and mental disabilities due to the toxic gas exposure in 1984.

12. Sujatha Surepally, Telangana, India

 SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

An academic and activist from Telangana, Sujatha Surepally is one of the most important voices arguing that environmental justice cannot be separated from social justice. Dalit communities, she points out, are disproportionately exposed to the worst environmental conditions, living near industrial waste, handling refuse that others produce, and dependent on degraded common lands. In her writing and speaking, where she challenges extractive industries like granite mining and sand mining in Telangana, she makes the case that any serious climate movement must grapple honestly with caste, or risk replicating the very hierarchies it claims to be fighting.

“The climate crisis does not affect everyone equally. The most marginalised communities pay the highest price for the destruction they did not cause and from which they received no benefit. A climate movement that does not address caste is not a complete solution; it is a partial one. And partial solutions serve those already at the top.” — Sujatha Surepally

13. Ridhima Pandey, Uttarakhand, India

SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 16 (Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions)

When she was nine years old, Ridhima Pandey filed a petition against the Indian government for failing to take adequate action on climate change. She was from Haridwar in Uttarakhand, a state she had watched get ravaged by floods and landslides, and she was not prepared to wait for someone else to act. She later joined sixteen young people from around the world in a complaint filed before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, alongside Greta Thunberg. Named in the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Women at the age of thirteen, the now 18-year-old Ridhima continues to speak and advocate for a safe and healthy environment. Ridhima is a reminder that it is the youth who have the most stake in the future threatened by the climate crisis.

14. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Chad

SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 15 (Life on Land)

An indigenous Mbororo pastoralist from Chad, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim began advocating indigenous people’s rights and environmental protection at age 12 and has since spent years at global climate negotiations ensuring that indigenous peoples, who are among the first and worst affected by climate change, are not just invited to the table but actually heard. She maps landscapes, documents traditional ecological knowledge, and co-developed a 3D mapping project to give voice to indigenous communities in national adaptation planning. Her TED Talk on how indigenous knowledge can meet science to solve climate change has over a million views.

“There cannot be a solution to combat climate change if it does not include indigenous people. The wisdom we hold is based on living in harmony with nature. We know how to keep the balance of nature.” — Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

15. Vanessa Nakate, Uganda

SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) | SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)

When Vanessa Nakate started striking outside Uganda’s Parliament alone, few paid attention. Today, she is one of Africa’s most prominent climate activists, the founder of the Rise Up Movement, and a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Her particular focus is Africa’s erasure from climate conversations, a continent that has contributed the least to the crisis but faces some of the most catastrophic consequences. She has made it her mission to ensure that global climate discussions are not complete until African voices are genuinely at the front and centre of the conversation.

“Africa is not a footnote in the climate story. We are at the frontlines. We are the ones losing our crops, our homes, our people. And yet we are the ones most often left out of the room where decisions are made.” — Vanessa Nakate

16. Uma Prajapati, Auroville, India

SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production) | SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth)

Uma Prajapati, a fashion designer from NIFT, Delhi came to Auroville in 1996 for a two-week design project and never left. In 1997, she founded Upasana, a conscious fashion enterprise and has spent nearly three decades proving that fashion can be a genuine force for ecological and social good. Upasana works with natural and organic fibres, natural dyes, and hand processes, sourcing from artisan communities across sixteen states. After the 2004 tsunami devastated coastal Tamil Nadu, Uma pivoted Upasana toward social enterprise and launched Tsunamika, a relief and livelihood project, followed by Small Steps (compact cloth bags as alternatives to plastic), Kapas (supporting organic cotton farmers in Madurai), and a weaving project with the communities of Varanasi. Uma teaches conscious fashion in India and abroad, and is one of the most influential figures in the Indian sustainable fashion world. Uma has been practising systemic change long before it became fashionable to talk about it.

“At the core of Upasana lies its fundamental ethos of using fashion as a tool to solve social and environmental issues. Upasana has always questioned what fashion can do for society, since its inception.” — Uma Prajapati

17. Christiana Figueres, Costa Rica

SDG 13 (Climate Action) | SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)

Few people can credibly claim to have changed the course of history. Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who served as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is one of them. She is widely credited with assembling the political will that made the Paris Agreement possible in 2015, an extraordinary feat of stubborn, relentless optimism in the face of resistance. Today, through her Outrage + Optimism podcast and Mission 2020 initiative, she continues to push hard on timelines for climate action, reminding the world that hope, when deployed strategically, is not naivete; it is a powerful tool.

“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an attitude. And it’s an attitude I refuse to accept when it comes to the future of this planet.” — Christiana Figueres

18. Reema Nanavaty, Ahmedabad, India

SDG 1 (No Poverty) | SDG 5 (Gender Equality) | SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) | SDG 13 (Climate Action)

To understand what a truly sustainable economy could look like at scale, you need to spend time with SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association, the world’s largest union of informal sector workers, with over 3.7 million members across twenty states of India. At its helm is Reema Nanavaty, the Padma Shri-winning General Secretary who has steered SEWA into every corner of the sustainability conversation: artisan livelihoods, organic farming, waste recycling, textiles, and her flagship Hariyali–Green Energy and Livelihoods Initiative, which has given 200,000 women access to solar cookstoves, solar pumps, and clean energy tools. Working at the intersection of health, dignity and livelihoods, Reema has also been instrumental in devising innovative schemes like a heat insurance product that compensates members when extreme temperatures prevent them from working.

19. Uzramma, Hyderabad, India

SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) | SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production) | SDG 15 (Life on Land)

Uzra Bilgrami, known simply as Uzramma, is a Hyderabad-born textile activist who has spent thirty years doing something quietly revolutionary: putting the entire cotton cloth-making chain back into the hands of the people who do the actual work. Through the Malkha Marketing Trust, which she founded in 2005, Uzramma works with cotton farmers, spinners, natural dyers, and weavers to produce cloth the way it was made before the British industrialised, and destroyed, India’s handloom tradition. Malkha fabric, an amalgamation of Mulmul and Khadi, uses no harsh chemicals, travels no unnecessary distances, generates no wasteful baling and unbaling of fibre, and supports 150-odd artisans with a sustainable livelihood. Uzramma has also co-authored a book, A Frayed History, with journalist Meena Menon that lays out the full colonial dismantling of Indian cotton, and the case for rebuilding it on different terms.

20. Ruma Devi, Barmer, Rajasthan, India

SDG 1 (No Poverty) | SDG 5 (Gender Equality) | SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) | SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production)

Ruma Devi grew up in Rawatsar village in Barmer, lost her mother at the age of four, dropped out of school in class eight, was married at seventeen and lost her baby within days of giving birth. The one skill she had, intricate Barmeri embroidery, learned from her grandmother, became the thread she pulled to change everything. Starting with a self-help group of ten women in 2006, she built what is now the Gramin Vikas Evam Chetna Sansthan (GVCS), a network of more than 30,000 women artisans across 75 villages in the Thar region, preserving embroidery traditions that go back centuries and earning their practitioners a dignified income. From Rajasthan Heritage Week to London Fashion Week, from Kaun Banega Crorepati to a Harvard podium, Ruma Devi has carried the craft and the women behind it to the global stage. She is the recipient of the Nari Shakti Puraskar, India’s highest civilian honour for women. Ruma Devi challenges your notions of who a fashion designer is, and is living proof that sustainable fashion can begin as much with a needle and thread in a village in the Thar desert as on a mood board in a design studio!

Still Here, Still Showing Up

What unites these twenty women, from Assam’s wetlands to Meghalaya’s coal rivers, from Bhopal’s back lanes to the Ecuadorian Amazon, from Delhi’s courtrooms humming with air-purifiers to a weaver’s workshop in Hyderabad, a desert village in Barmer, and the corridors of the UN, is not just passion. It is the long-term commitment and dedication that comes from knowing the stakes personally. They are saving the rivers they grew up beside, the forests their grandmothers gathered from, the air their children are breathing right now, and the livelihoods of the women whose hands make the things we call our heritage.