Featured Program - August 2008  

Kartikeya Singh and the Founding of the Indian Youth Climate Network

By Gabriel González-Kreisberg, ICP Intern

The Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) is a fledgling NGO that is attempting to serve as a coalition uniting like-minded non-profit groups with Indian youth under the umbrella of mutual concerns for the future of the environment.  Its founder and Executive Director Kartikeya Singh is a young progressive intent on addressing the problem of climate change within the context of Youth Service.

Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, Kartikeya has, since a young age, been interested in the dynamics of environmental conservation and in becoming an environmentalist.  He cites the exposure to nature provided by his parents as one of the major factors influencing his thinking and motivating him to found the Indian Youth Climate Network.  As a child, Kartikeya was influenced by his avid readership of "National Geographic" and "Sanctuary Asia," as well as his parents' eagerness to take him to zoos everywhere he traveled. 

In 2007, Kartikeya finished his undergraduate degree at Furman University, having been awarded a BSc in a self-designed major entitled “Ecology & Sustainable Development.”  In creating his own major, Kartikeya attempted to, “through an interdisciplinary lens,” study the effects of environmental issues on society as a whole.  Last year, Kartikeya was a Compton Mentor Fellow in India under the tutelage of Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science & Environment.  During this transformative year, Singh began to understand and expand his role in a changing global environment.

However, the most important event that led to the founding of the IYCN was Kartikeya’s participation in the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali as a member of the US youth delegation last December.  While at the conference, Singh observed that he was the only Indian youth at the conference.  Astonished by this reality, he decided to attempt to create a non-profit that would raise awareness for environmental issues amongst the youth of India.

Singh’s vision for IYCN is directly connected to how he views the benefits of youth service.  He believes that Youth Engagement is meaningful because it educates students on a peer to peer level and helps young men and women learn from their mistakes.  In this way IYCN will help Indian youths by creating “a network for capacity building and sharing of ideas and solutions.”  IYCN would serve as a organizer for projects that aim to get youth engaged in “policy (nationally and internationally), implementation of low-carbon technology for rural areas, training people to be climate messengers and start local climate movements—especially green campus movements, and to generate a mass awareness campaign in India on the issue.”

IYCN and Kartikeya will serve as a standard for positive and productive progressive political participation.  Singh recognized an important need for change in the world’s second largest country, and through his creation of the network, will attempt to harness its ingenuity and eagerness.  This is not to say that IYCN does not have far to go.  Singh is still in the process of hiring a board and hopes to expand the organization to the rest of his native India.  However, once in place, ICYN has the potential to become “a powerful force which when mobilized can get the government’s attention.”