Environmentalist urges leaders to give young people ‘climate optimism’

An environmentalist behind the world’s largest “plogging” community has called on leaders at Cop29 to offer “climate optimism” amid widespread disappointment among young people.

Vivek Gurav, 29, who lives in Wembley, north-west London, started plogging, jogging and litter picking, in 2019, in his home city of Pune in western India.

The group since claims to have cleared around 15,000 tonnes of litter via hundreds of campaigns, and in 2021 Mr Gurav expanded his efforts to the UK, when he moved to study for an MSc in environmental policy and management at the University of Bristol.

He established the Bristol Ploggers and undertook a series of challenges, including a 30-day clean-up across 30 UK cities in December 2022 and a similar 30-day challenge across 30 areas of London in the summer of this year.

As world leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday for the two-week annual United Nations climate conference, Mr Gurav emphasised the importance of them keeping to their commitments to promote climate optimism and youth engagement.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr Gurav said: “I definitely feel these conferences are important but, at the same time, the commitments that are made here need to be followed up as well.

We have been talking about climate optimism, because we can see the disappointment amongst youngsters. Our goal is to talk about how they can develop initiatives to bring about positivity and hope.”

Mr Gurav, who works as an environmental consultant in London, is advocating for increased climate finance and support for developing countries like India, which faces severe climate challenges.

He said: “Even more than the UK, India needs a lot of conservation efforts – because of the kind of country we have, India is facing a lot of climate crisis issues like floods.

There’s a lot of issues in terms of droughts in the country, and with the kind of development we are seeing, there’s a massive amount of deforestation happening. Although I’m based here in the UK, I keep travelling back to my country to set up initiatives in different cities.”

Over the last five years his plogging community, which on Instagram is described as the “world’s largest”, has been joined by thousands of ploggers.

In 2022 he won an award from then-prime minister Boris Johnson and spoke at the 17th UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (Coy17) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the youth version of Cop27.

He said: “I started my environmental work because I wanted individuals like me who are motivated and driven to do something in the world, to bring about change.

I wanted to create a platform for youngsters like me.”

Mr Gurav’s next venture is a citywide tour of India, where he plans to educate young people about the climate crisis and set up community initiatives.