At 24-years-old, Ayisha Siddiqa is being recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s Women of the Year for changing the face of climate action. She is a Pakistani Climate justice advocate. She is a co-founder of Polluters Out and the Executive Director of Student Affairs at FFU. On Sept 20th, 2019 she helped mobilize and lead over 300,000 students onto the streets of Manhattan demanding their governments take climate action.
Due to climate disasters in Pakistan she became aware of the link between human rights and climate change. Access to resources was, for some people, worth killing for, she learned. For many, demanding clean air and water meant risking their lives.
Growing up in a matriarchal, tribal community in eastern Pakistan helped shape her outlook. “The wounded world is so beautiful, because she keeps producing life,” she says. “And my work is in defense of life. By default, its defense of the rights of women. Therefore, it’s also by default human rights. I was raised with the idea that the earth is a living being, that she gives life to you and in return, you have a responsibility,” she says. “And I think we, collectively, have come to a point where we are ignoring the cries of earth mother.”
Ayisha is a poet. At the annual U.N. Climate Conference in Egypt in November, she shared an original poem titled “So much about your sustainability, my people are dying” as a rebuke of leaders’ failure to act on climate change.
Visit Ayisha at: https://advaya.life/teachers/ayisha-siddiqa
