Welcome to Asia & the Pacific!
This year our team has been hard at work building our regional network and growing our regional Global Ambassador team.
Stories from Asia and the Pacific:
When Blood Becomes a Lullaby is a poetry reflection that explores women, nature and struggle and memory. By merging two poems - God Color and The Night Lullabies - which explores how bodies endures both pain and beauty and how daughters carry their mother's resilience. It explores cycles of nature that reveals the beauty of womanhood and their struggle.
In Vizhinjam’s Gangayar estuary, a neglected canal became both a mirror and a warning. Through six months of fieldwork—combining GIS mapping, biodiversity analysis, and public health data
I uncovered how ecological decay and human neglect intertwine. This story traces not just the pollution of a waterway but the slow awakening of a coastal community learning to reclaim its voice, one conversation and cleanup at a time.
“Ripples of Hope” follows a young explorer’s journey through the rivers and wetlands of Banten, uncovering the hidden connections between nature, science, and local livelihoods. From misty mountain streams to bustling fish markets, the story blends field discovery, laboratory research, and community voices to reveal how freshwater ecosystems sustain life and how even small acts of care can create ripples of change for the future.
Sugar is sweet, but its story isn’t. From water‑draining cane fields to mill waste, rising diabetes, and maternal health challenges, the journey of sugar in India affects both people and the planet. Dhara for Dhara explores how youth engagement, investigative reporting, and innovation are reimagining sugar production and consumption, showing how informed choices can protect health, support sustainable agriculture, and inspire systemic change.
Air was my first teacher: fragile, invisible, essential. Growing up in New Delhi’s smog taught me that survival itself could be conditional. From that awakening emerged a lifelong pursuit: to use art and storytelling as instruments of climate transformation. Through Climate Conservancy and ArtSea, I bridge data and emotion, turning climate science into cultural resonance. Because when people feel the story of the Earth, they begin to protect it.
At nine, Leena Joshi was struck by the harsh contrast between polluted Delhi and the clear skies of Switzerland. By fourteen, witnessing plastic waste on a beach ignited her passion for climate action. Now the founder of Climate Conservancy, Leena leads an international youth movement advocating for climate education. With 9,000 young people in 60+ countries, her mission is to create systematic change, ensuring a healthier planet for all.
Born in a Delhi slum, Puneet Singh Singhal’s life is a testament to resilience. Facing poverty, pollution, and non-apparent disabilities, Puneet founded Green Disability to advocate for disability-inclusive climate action. His story highlights the deep connections between climate change, accessibility, and human rights, emphasizing that true sustainability requires justice for all.
In Afghanistan, multiple crises are exacerbated by the deepening challenges of climate change. It is suffering its second drought in four years, along with an economic meltdown that is compounding the humanitarian situation. These near-term climate impacts, if left unaddressed, will only worsen the ongoing socioeconomic catastrophe, conflict, and violence, and also disadvantage the regional counties. So, we need to call upon UNFCCC to take Afghanistan seriously into consideration and help them shift to a better climate policy and circular economy. Regardless of our country, identity, race, and gender, we are all citizens of one planet. So, let's sustain it together.
This story is about coffee planting by a non-coffee-consuming community in Manghe Village, southwestern China. Whereas selling of dried coffee beans has yielded the majority of the income for the local farmers, and this area is said to be the future's largest Yunnan Arabica coffee source for the country, and serving the world's needs, drinking coffee seems a luxury to the locals. While climate change has switched much land use in the higher elevational areas into coffee fields, I wonder if this would also impact the current coffee farming in Manghe and the possible outcome related to deforestation and land conversion.
As we know, the Indian Himalaya region (IHR) is the storehouse of many discovered and undiscovered novel plant species. To explore this repository, a plant exploration trip was planned far in the remote alpine zone (Royal Sar) of Overa-Aru wildlife sanctuary, Kashmir Himalaya. Along the trails of plant specimen collection, a fascinating population of plant species from genus Swertia struck my sight and became limelight to satisfy my curiosity about new plant species discovery.
BLOGS:
In June of 2021, the Y4N team joined our partners at the Meghna Knowledge Forum to participate in the first ever multi-stakeholder exchange about sustainable and inclusive management of the Megha River Basin, which stretches across Bangladesh and India.
During the Forum, we hosted an interactive side session for youth called The River Game to discuss the interconnections…
Dive in as we share some regional examples of communities living adjacent to forests as well as stories from youth who work with forest and forest-communities around the world!
As part of Global Landscape Forum’s Biodiversity Conference in November 2020, Y4N Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Vinamra Mathur, joined forest experts from around the world for a panel titled: For forests’ sake: Transforming extractive industries and infrastructure to achieve NYDF Goal 3. The panel addressed the urgent need for…
