Meet our nominees of L'Oreal Paris Women Awards 2015 in the Environment category.
Lakshmi Narayanan
Lakshmi Narayanan founded Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat, a Pune-based trade union that organised 9,000+ rag pickers/waste collectors and helped them work with dignity and created a sustainable de-centralised, waste management model in the country. She followed that by creating a cooperative called SWaCH (Solid Waste Collection and Handling) in 2007 in association with the Pune government to handle almost all of the city’s waste, a remarkable departure from other cities, where private contractors haul waste to landfills in trucks. Through its 2,300 members, SWaCH services over 4 lakh households across 76 prabhags in 15 municipal administrative wards of the Pune Municipal Corporation and the number is growing. SWaCH seeks to provide decent livelihoods in the recycling industry.
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Nisha Bora
Nisha Bora, a young Assam native, is building on the work begun by her parents over a decade ago to create new livelihoods and increase the value of rhinoceros and elephants to local villagers. Along with her father, she started Elrhino Eco Industries as a wildlife conservation-linked waste recycling project that simultaneously provides a means of livelihood for the villagers of Chaygaon in Assam. Elrhino, a stationery label consisting of paper products made out of elephant and rhinoceros poo, encourages employment and skill development of rural women who are otherwise exploited by unscrupulous contractors. The unit produces paper products like notebooks, bags, lampshades and photo frames. Nisha is a sociologist by education and a market research professional with a career spanning 15 years and her aim is to create a legacy that celebrates beauty in waste, uses litter to conserve, and facilitates opportunities to build a sustainable world.
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Suprabha Seshan
Suprabha Seshan is director of the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in the Western Ghats, where local villagers train to be horticulturists or gardeners, and schoolchildren, teachers, scientific researchers, and policymakers learn and physically participate in the process of environmental conservation. Moving away from conventional theories about indiscriminate reforestation that ignores gene pools endemic to regions and ecosystems, Suprabha and her team have painstakingly brought back on the Gurukula lands a rainforest habitat that supports a myriad of plant life, with each contributing to change in the micro-climate and water table. This restoration has enabled the return of rare native animals, birds, and insect species—some believed to have been extinct—and raised the water table beyond expectations. It has also shown local people how they, as an intrinsic part of this natural cycle, may contribute and benefit from sustaining the model, while also initiating new and urgently needed land-management practices throughout India.
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Suryamani Bhagat
34-year-old Suryamani Bhagat has been on the forefront of the Jungle Bachao Andolan (Save the Forest Movement) in her state. Since the age of 20, she has donned the role of an environmental heroine in the deeply patriarchal society of Jharkhand and is mobilising the local tribal communities to protect their forests, as well as educating others on their rights over natural resources. She has been instrumental in raising awareness on the Forest Rights Act passed in 2006 to enable forest dwelling communities to access resources that have been denied to them as a result of the continuation of oppressive colonial forest laws. The founder of ‘Torang’, a tribal rights and cultural center in Kotari Village, Ranchi district in Jharkhand, she heads a committee of 15 women who patrol the forests and keep a register to record what resources are needed, and ensure that no one cuts more wood than is necessary. She is also working on ways to reduce the impacts of climate change in her area.