From the Brahmaputra to the Himalayas: How a Youth Climate Handbook Launched in Pune Carries the Voice of ASSAM

PAHARI BARUAH

On 20 February 2026, at the International Youth Sustainability Festival 4.0 held at the Symbiosis Centre for Management Studies, a book rooted in the ecological anxieties of Northeast India stepped onto a national platform. Everyday Climate Action – A Handbook for Gen Z, published by Mahabahu Climate Forum, was formally released before an audience of students, scientists, policy thinkers, and climate advocates from across India.

Everyday Climate Action – A Handbook for Gen Z, written by internationally acclaimed climate activist and Climate Editor of Mahabahu Rituraj Phukan, was formally released before an audience of students, academics, scientists, administrators, and sustainability advocates from across India.

Published by the Mahabahu Climate Forum, the book represents far more than a youth guide. It is the culmination of a growing climate intellectual and institutional movement emerging from Northeast India.

The ceremonial release was led by H.E. Shri. Jigmed Wangchuk Namgyal, King of Ladakh, Dr. Vidya Yeravdekar, Pro-chancellor, Symbiosis International University, Padma Shri Jadav Payeng- the Forest man of India, Dr. Ramakrishna Raman, Vice Chancellor – Symbiosis International Deemed University, Dr. Sharad Kale, Head of Technology Transfer, BARC, Dr. Shashikala Gurpur, Director-Symbiosis Law School, Pune, But the story behind this moment extends far beyond a ceremonial launch.

The Author: A Climate Voice from Assam

Rituraj Phukan has long been a persistent voice in India’s climate discourse. As Climate Editor of Mahabahu and Convenor of the Mahabahu Climate Forum, he has authored numerous analytical articles linking global environmental negotiations with Assam’s lived ecological realities.

His work consistently bridges policy and practice – interpreting global developments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change while grounding them in local floodplains, wetlands, forests, and vulnerable communities.

Internationally engaged yet regionally rooted, Phukan’s writing reflects a dual perspective: climate change as geopolitical negotiation, and climate change as lived disruption. Everyday Climate Action distills that experience into an accessible handbook for Generation Z – a generation raised in the era of accelerating climate extremes.

A Continuum of Climate Thought: From Justice to Action

The Pune launch did not mark a beginning, but a continuation. In 2025, Phukan authored Climate Justice 101 : Empowering Community Leadership, a foundational exploration of equity, historical responsibility, and grassroots mobilisation in the climate era. That book included additional chapters by Anjan Sarma, Kakali Das, Sanjeev Sarma, Padmaza Talukdar, and Kaustabh Baruah. It was released at Bhattadev University in Pathsala by the university’s Vice Chancellor, District Commissioner of Bajali District, Aditya Pundir-Director of Climate Reality Project India & South Asia – a rare institutional endorsement of climate justice scholarship emerging from Assam. The book is now available on Amazon, expanding its readership nationally and internationally.

Together, these two publications form an intellectual arc: from diagnosing climate injustice to empowering everyday action.

Behind both initiatives stands Anjan Sarma, Editor of Mahabahu and Co-Founder of the Mahabahu Climate Forum, whose leadership initiative institutionalised climate publishing from Assam. In a landscape where climate narratives often emanate from metropolitan centres, this regional publishing movement asserts intellectual agency from the Northeast.

Climate Justice 101 : Empowering Community Leadership

Assam: Climate Change as Lived Reality

In many parts of the world, climate change remains abstract. In Assam, it is seasonal. The Brahmaputra floods annually, but in recent decades the scale, unpredictability, and erosive intensity have increased. Entire villages have been swallowed by riverbank erosion. Agricultural cycles are disrupted. Wetlands such as Deepor Beel face mounting ecological pressure.

Communities in Dhemaji, Majuli, Barpeta, and beyond measure climate change not in degrees Celsius but in lost homesteads, displaced families, and submerged schools. This lived vulnerability shapes the moral urgency of Everyday Climate Action.

The Himalayan Connection

The presence of H.E. Jigmed Wangchuk Namgyal at the launch symbolized the broader Himalayan dimension. The cryosphere – often called the Third Pole – is melting at accelerating rates, influencing river systems that sustain Northeast India. Glacial retreat in Ladakh and the Eastern Himalayas affects sediment load, river discharge, and flood patterns downstream in Assam. Ecological interdependence binds these regions together. The handbook situates these realities within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, reinforcing the interconnectedness of climate action, water security, biodiversity, and poverty alleviation.

Rituraj Phukan (Left), Jadav Payeng (Centre), and Dr Soumitra Das on 20th February, Pune

From Publication to Practice: Climate Action on the Ground

The Mahabahu Climate Forum has ensured that climate engagement does not remain confined to books. In Bajali district, with active support from the district administration, the Forum organised a six-day intensive climate workshop involving district heads of government departments, principals, teachers, and students. Climate change was discussed not merely as an environmental issue but as an administrative, agricultural, educational, and developmental concern.

This initiative embedded climate literacy within governance structures – an uncommon but necessary shift. The Forum further signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bhattadev University, formalising climate education within academic frameworks. Under this partnership, the first-ever Principals’ Conclave for the Green Campus Program in the Northeast region was organised.

The conclave was held in association with The Climate Reality Project India & South Asia, headed by Director Aditya Pundir. This collaboration connected Assam’s institutions with a global climate advocacy network, reinforcing that regional climate education can align with international movements.

Training the Next Generation

Beyond workshops and conclaves, the Forum has trained hundreds of students and teachers across Assam through structured programs led by a dedicated team headed by Rituraj Phukan. These sessions focus on climate science fundamentals, sustainability practices, policy literacy, and community engagement skills. Participants are encouraged not merely to learn, but to replicate climate awareness initiatives within their own institutions. In a region where environmental education often remains textbook-bound, this participatory model creates multiplier effects. Students become climate ambassadors. Teachers become sustainability mentors. Campuses evolve into micro-centres of resilience.

From Justice to Agency

Where Climate Justice 101 emphasized equity and global responsibility, Everyday Climate Action pivots toward empowerment. It introduces the 5 R framework – Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle – as a civic ethic. It encourages youth engagement under Action for Climate Empowerment. It links sustainability to green entrepreneurship and future employment opportunities. It reframes eco-anxiety as agency.

Jadav Payeng with Mahabahu

Jadav Payeng: A Living Metaphor

The Pune launch became more than a ceremonial moment; it felt like a closing loop in a larger argument about how real ecological change happens. Jadav Payeng’s presence there, after decades spent turning a barren sandbar into a living forest, makes the narrative tangible. It shifts the story from a classical “great idea” or “policy flip” to a deeply human, daily form of stewardship. Payeng’s work is not flashy or transient; it is a long arc of patient, patient labor-planting, nurturing, protecting, and allowing natural processes to take their course.

That quiet persistence is exactly what the books celebrate: the conviction that forests, habitats, and ecosystems recover not in a single season, but through years, even generations, of attentive care. Payeng embodies the book’s core philosophy that environmental destiny is not sealed by grand gestures alone but shaped by countless small acts of perseverance-one sapling, one season, one stubborn commitment at a time.

His presence also grounds the narrative in a concrete, local example of ecological restoration. It demonstrates how an individual can catalyze broader change: a single person’s sustained effort can create habitat, microclimates, and biodiversity that ripple through a landscape and inspire others to imagine what restoration might look like in their own contexts.

In a country grappling with rapid development and ecological stress, Payeng’s forest becomes a living counterexample to the idea that progress must come at nature’s expense. It invites readers to view restoration as achievable, scalable, and deeply personal-the kind of work that ordinary people can begin today, with lifelong impact.

A Northeast Voice in National Climate Discourse

A Few Delegates: International Youth Sustainability Festival 4.0

The significance of the Pune launch lies not merely in its ceremonial scale but in its symbolic repositioning. A climate handbook authored in Assam, published by a regional forum, rooted in Northeast ecological realities, and institutionally supported through district workshops and university partnerships, found validation on a major national academic platform. This marks a subtle shift in India’s climate narrative. Northeast India is not merely a site of climate impact. It is emerging as a site of climate thought leadership.

Building an Architecture of Climate Leadership

Climate change is the defining challenge of the 21st century. Yet responses are increasingly being shaped not only in global summits but in regional editorial rooms, district workshops, and university conclaves. With Climate Justice 101 and Everyday Climate Action, Rituraj Phukan and the Mahabahu Climate Forum have built more than books – they have constructed an intellectual and institutional architecture for youth climate leadership emerging from Assam.

Supported by the initiative of Mahabahu Climate Forum, this movement links the Brahmaputra’s floodplains with global climate justice debates and national sustainability platforms. On 20 February 2026, in Pune, the applause recognised a book.

But history may remember it differently -as the moment Northeast’s climate voice stepped confidently into India’s mainstream discourse, carrying with it not just warning, but wisdom, organisation, and youth-led resolve.

Climate action, as this movement insists, is not occasional.
It is not metropolitan.
It is not symbolic. It is everyday – and from Assam, it is rising.

20-02-2026

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