- Supriya Sahu’s climate initiatives in Tamil Nadu focus on cool roofs, mangrove restoration, plastic reduction and climate-smart villages to tackle heat and environmental challenges.
- Her work connects climate adaptation, education, public health and community livelihoods, providing a model that other Indian states can replicate.
The temperatures inside government schools in TN can reach roughly 42 degrees Celsius in May. The students fan notebooks over their faces and pretend to study inside with no proper ventilation or air conditioning. The stone walls of the schools hold heat from the day before. This picture prompted an IAS officer, Supriya Sahu, to rethink the connection among school buildings, the coastline, and children’s ability to learn. To top it all, Supriya Sahu was awarded the “Champions of the Earth” award by the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi.
Cool roofs, hot classrooms and a simple fix
Supriya Sahu refused to accept the thermal misery of children who could not afford air conditioning in their classrooms. Therefore, she started the “Cool Roof” Project, coating over 200 government school roofs with a white material and creating space for natural ventilation. This dropped by 5-8 degrees inside the classroom compared to the outside environment during peak summer. The same design is now being extended to housing clusters, helping the low-income households during heatwaves without the carbon cost of mechanical cooling. It is simultaneously a health intervention, a climate-adaptation measure and an education policy, dressed up as construction work.
Rebuilding a coastline. One mangrove at a time.
While serving as Additional Chief Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Forests (ECCF) of Tamil Nadu, she helped the state plant over 108 million trees and rehabilitate 3,610 ha of mangroves. Furthermore, wetland coverage, initially comprising just 1 Ramsar site, grew to 20. Seven new wildlife sanctuaries were established (7 new wildlife sanctuaries, including the first-ever Dugong Conservation Reserve in India, as well as India’s first Slender Loris Sanctuary). The government has identified and added over 7,000 ha of new Reserve Forest areas.
From 2021 to 2023, forest and tree cover growth over Tamil Nadu combined amounted to almost 1,000km2. The UNEP citation mentions that these combined initiatives generated millions of green jobs and increased the climate resilience of nearly 12 million people.
Operation blue mountain and the war on plastic
In the Nilgiris, Sahu led Operation Blue Mountain: a campaign to clear plastic waste that had begun encroaching into forest corridors, threatening wildlife that had started feeding on discarded packaging. Part of the campaign included a Guinness World Records title for the most trees planted in a single day. Simultaneously, she drove the Meendum Manjapai (‘bring back the cloth bag’) initiative, installing reusable-bag vending machines in public spaces and funding door-to-door awareness drives across the state. By 2024, the campaign had become, by most accounts, a genuine mass movement rather than a government scheme that people ignored.
Climate-Smart Villages as a Replicable Template
Perhaps the most widely ignored aspect of Sahu’s initiatives: the creation of the model “climate smart villages.” The initiative involved solar-powered and rainwater harvesting settlements. These settlements relied on green agriculture technologies and had ‘climate fellows’ employed to oversee their projects on environmental improvement. In addition to many other states that have begun studying these structures, Tamil Nadu also saw the launch of India’s very first non-profit state climate vehicle- the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company, to manage all the projects related to green missions of Tamil Nadu at the institutional level.
Conclusion
A 1991-batch IAS officer with a PG in botany actually implemented what decades of international climate summits have been unable to agree upon for 30 years by connecting sustainable cooling, environmental rehabilitation, community livelihoods, and access to education under a single governance framework. The moral of the story is not complex. Climate action will work only if it aims to save humans, taking carbon footprint as a necessary consequence rather than the central goal.
All of India’s states experiencing summer temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius-that includes almost all of them-need to study the initiatives taken by the Tamil Nadu Department of Environment between 2021 and 2025.
Indian national adaptation plans must make it mandatory for all district administrations to publicise the results of a cool-infrastructure audit, including the number of schools, PHCs, and affordable housing communities that still lack shade, trees, and reflective rooftops. Supriya Sahu turned a government department into a climate movement. That’s what must be aspired to.
Clear Cut Climate Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: September 09, 2026 15:40 IST
Written By: Tanmay J. Urs
