Bengaluru: Over 80 youngsters from 13 states presented a charter of demands to protect the environment at the Indian Social Institute on Monday.
Youth from Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Gujarat, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh took part in the second youth convention on ‘Ecological Rights for Today and Tomorrow’.
They presented the charter which included a balanced industrial development and urbanisation, ban on privatisation of natural endowments, protection of the rights of indigenous communities and their youth over natural resources and protection of their traditional livelihoods, ban on chemical intensive agriculture, provision of safe drinking water and sanitation and enabling youth and children access to free flowing clean rivers, lakes and other water bodies.
Divya Upadhyay of Uttarakhand said, “Lack of supply of clean water is one of the major problems faced in all states. We also discussed many national problems.”
For the last two years, over 12,000 youths, under National Youth Network, have taken up awareness activities including collecting indigenous seeds and distributing them to the local farmers, creating awareness about waste management, highlighting the issues caused by the usage of plastic, involving in the production of biochemicals, fighting for the reduction of deforestation in
Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and many other initiatives in different parts of the country.
The youngsters, as part of the three-day convention organised by a group of NGOs, had also put on display a variety of indigenous and organic seeds and exhibited many innovative ideas to preserve and protect the declining ecology.
