COP 11 biological diversity: Junglistan campaign of Greenpeace: Hyderabad girl collects maximum number of signatures against coal mining in the forests

By Syed Akbar

Hyderabad, Oct 12: A 15-year-old city girl has collected the maximum
number of signatures for the online signature campaign launched by
Greenpeace India to protect the country’s biodiversity.

Vibhawari Jami, a class X student of an international school, will
present the memorandum with five-lakh signatures to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh when he attends the high-level segment meeting of the
United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) here on
October 16. So far 2.5 lakh signatures have been collected online.

“Vibhawari Jami from Hyderabad is like any other teenager in the city
but what makes her different is her love for the environment. So much
so that the schoolgirl has become an activist, who wants to save the
environment. She is leading in collecting the maximum number of
support for  Greenpeace India led campaign called Junglistan (a
virtual republic of the central Indian forests),” said Jagori Dhar of
Greenpeace.

Vibhawari told this correspondent that she had utilised all social and
microblogging sites as well as the help of friends to mobilise the
maximum number of signatures for Greenpeace campaign -
www.junglistan.org which is an online petition asking the prime
minister to stop allocating new coal blocks and clearing more forests
for coal mining until the coal scam is investigated and there is a
clear demarcation of areas where mining shouldn’t be allowed.

She has also written a speech, which she hopes to deliver at the CBD.
“I have nothing against development, because that is what decreases
poverty, increases literacy and benefits the country overall. However,
I do have issues with the kind of development that fulfils the
promises made to us,” Vibhawari adds.