Tamil Nadu IAS officer Supriya Sahu has been awarded the 2025 UN Champions of the Earth Award for Inspiration and Action, the UN’s highest environmental honour. She was felicitated as the 2025 Champions of the Earth award in Nairobi on Wednesday.
Sahu was honored for her pioneering and long-standing leadership on critical environmental issues in India, including plastics and wildlife conservation, a press release said on Wednesday.
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Supriya Sahu, Champions of the Earth 2025 winner for inspiration and action, said: “My inspiration comes from the people who stood by me from the local village and worked with me to clean the mangroves as their own. My inspiration also comes from the children who look up to you with twinkling eyes.”
Who is Supriya Sahu?
Supriya Sahu has served as Tamil Nadu’s Additional Chief Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forests for the last four and a half years.
According to her profile shared by the United Nations, Sahu’s love for nature began in her early childhood when her family traveled the country for her father’s work.
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She adores elephants and her Instagram account is full of posts about them. Sahu likes to say that elephants can teach us resilience, family bonding and leadership.
During her 30-year career as a civil servant, Sahu developed a growing fascination with India’s rich biodiversity.
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However, he is also keenly aware of the serious damage irresponsible human behavior can do.
“I saw animals eating plastic waste and realized that our planet is suffocating. The experience became transformative for me,” said Sahu, recalling her time as district collector in the Nilgiris district.
Why was Supriya Sahu awarded the UN’s highest environmental award?
According to the United Nations, Supriya Sahu was honored for her pioneering leadership in sub-national climate action, ecosystem restoration and scaling up sustainable cooling innovation in Tamil Nadu.
Its initiatives have shown how integrated governance and nature-based solutions, together with a mix of low- and high-tech interventions, can protect vulnerable communities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Her work has created millions of green jobs and positioned the state as a model for science-based and community-driven climate resilience,” the UN said.
Sahu’s sustainable cooling and restoration initiatives have also expanded forest cover and improved resilience for 12 million people.
Key works and initiatives of Supriya Sahu
In 2000, she launched a campaign called “Operation Blue Mountain” to eliminate single-use plastics in the Nilgiris. The issue of plastic pollution was still under the radar at the time.
In recent years, Sahu has introduced the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company, a non-profit organization focused on coastal resilience and a series of projects to address urban heat and growing demand for cooling.
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Sahu also led the Cool Roof project, one of the passive cooling initiatives being implemented in 200 public “green schools”.
She also led efforts to plant more than 100 million trees and create 65 new reserve forests in Tamil Nadu. Under her leadership, the state doubled its mangrove cover, expanded its wetlands from 1 to 20 and launched the US$60 million Endangered Species Conservation Fund, the UN said.
In Chennai, Sahu applies this natural approach to urban planning.
