Green Girl

Green,green,green,with buildings in between. Such is the picture of the world Yugratna Srivastava,Junior Member of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),would like to paint. Back in Lucknow on Friday after attending the summit on climate change at the United Nations Headquarters in New York,she hardly got the time to get over her jet lag as she hopped from her school,St Fidelis,to the studio of one television channel to another. “My appeal to all the world leaders I met was to pay more attention to the environment than they do,” she says,rattling names of the Prime Ministers and Presidents of different nations at the conference who were all “quite pleased to meet me”. The class IX student took the opportunity to move them towards encouraging participation of youth in the cause of environment. “Most of the world leaders are not as attentive towards the environmental concern as they should be,” says the 13 years old,sounding more sensible than precocious. “When I turn 14,the UNEP heads will promote me from Junior Member to Youth Member. We are all set for our ‘Plant Planet’ campaign in which we will lead a massive drive to plant saplings for a greener earth.”