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Disha Ravi, the 21-year-old Bengaluru-based climate change activist whom the Delhi Police arrested and charged with sedition on Sunday, 14 February, was the voice of India at the Global Climate Week event organised by Fridays for Future (FFF) in September 2020.
FFF is a global climate strike movement started by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg. The movement encouraged students to strike demanding urgent action on the climate crisis.
The Quint gathered that Ravi, a vegan activist, was part of the FFF movement’s international MAPA wing. MAPA stands for Most Affected People and Areas – meaning, countries and peoples of the Global South (developing world), who bear the brunt of carbon emissions and climate change.
She further wrote from the FFF Karnataka handle, a source confirmed, “We urge you to join us in amplifying the voices of the Most Affected People and Areas with the hashtag #FightClimateInjustice.”
On 25 September 2020, FFF activists across the globe had organised virtual meets and social media protests as part of the global climate week. The events went virtual last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ravi, an active member of the Karnataka segment of FFF, contacted several global activists from developing countries to shift the focus of activism from climate crisis in Europe, the US, and China to developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where a large majority of people are affected by the climate crisis. As per research published in the journal Science Advances in 2017, South Asia is expected to experience “unliveable” temperature and humidity by the turn of the century if climate change goes unchecked.
The article, which says that climate crisis has already arrived in Asian countries, asks the United States, the European Union, and China, “What are the people responsible for the crisis doing?” The article further reads, “Climate activists from these areas (MAPA) are rarely featured in international media, even as the world celebrates the hope that the youth climate movement inspires. Only when the silencing of our voices in the global discussion about climate was so blunt that it could not be ignored, were some of us given a voice.”
As exemplified by her MAPA activism, farmers' protest was not the only Indian crisis which Disha Ravi had addressed. Ravi had opposed the Union government’s draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) 2020. According to FFF activists, Ravi had written to Prakash Javadekar, the country’s Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, asking him to rethink the draft EIA. “Many of us felt that the draft EIA relaxes environmental clearances for the advantage of corporations. Disha felt that this was a cause worth taking up and wrote to the minister,” an FFF volunteer confirmed. While the contents of the note she wrote are not currently known, Ravi had a clear understanding of the farmers’ issues that she supported, her friends said.
Doubling down on her MAPA activism, Ravi supported the farmers’ protest against the Union government’s new farm laws. FFF’s India chapter, too, had extended solidarity to the farmers. “FFF is not an elite organisation which talks about climate change in a vacuum,” the FFF source said.
Ravi, the daughter of an agricultural family in Karnataka, felt rather moved by the farmers' plight. “She is the only salaried person in her family. The others, including her mother, depend on agriculture. It is only natural for her to have understood the farmers’ plight as a conscientious young activist,” a member of the FFF India team said. An alumna of Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru, Ravi also supports animal rights and is vehemently against deforestation.
The Delhi Police has accused Disha Ravi of having been the editor of an activist “toolkit”, which Greta Thunberg had tweeted this month as part of global support for farmers’ protest. About the toolkit, an FFF activist explained, “A toolkit merely familiarises a reader with the subject of urgency at hand. If one wants to learn about climate crisis and farmers’ protest in India one can go through the toolkit and understand the basic information.” The toolkit is expected to help create awareness, they explained.
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