Sadhguru honoured with Water Champion Award by TERI

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has honoured Isha Foundation founder Sadhguru with the Water Champion Award at Water Sustainability Awards ceremony 2022-23 for spearheading path-breaking ecological initiatives like Project Green Hands, Rally for Rivers, and Cauvery Calling. 

The ecological initiatives address the urgent need to grow the green cover, revitalize Indian rivers, and restore soil health, said TERI in a tweet. 

In association with the Ministry of Jal Shakti, UNDP India, and the International Water Association (IWA), TERI organised the second edition of the Water Sustainability Awards. The Awards recognise the efforts that facilitate the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals on Clean Water and Sanitation. 

For over three decades, Sadhguru has been leading ecological initiatives, which continue to grow in scale and impact. It all began in his own backyard at Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore, where he inspired volunteers to plant 6 million trees over a course of 22 days on the glorious Velliangiri mountains, which had been stripped bare. 

Concerned by the looming desertification of Tamil Nadu, Sadhguru in 2004, launched Project Green Hands, facilitating the planting of 25 million saplings. Project Green Hands received India’s highest environmental award, the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, in 2010. 

In 2017, Sadhguru led a month-long ‘Rally for Rivers’ driving across 16 Indian states, conducting over 180 events. The rally brought the issue of dying rivers into the national limelight, garnering support from 162 million people. Sadhguru presented the  Revitalization of Rivers in India: Draft Policy Recommendation to the Indian Prime Minister. Accepting the recommendations, the Government of India undertook to rejuvenate 13 major Indian rivers allocating a budget of Rs 19,000 crore for their revival. 

The Rally for Rivers also gave way to Cauvery Calling to act as a large-scale demonstration of River Revitalision using a tree-based agricultural model. Cauvery is essentially a forest-fed river that flows perennially, but as a result of losing 70% of the basin tree cover, is drying rapidly, unable to reach the ocean during the summer. 

The movement, therefore, embarked on a mammoth task of enabling 5.2 million farmers to plant 2.42 billion trees in the Cauvery River Basin in a span of 12 years.  It has enabled the planting of 84 million trees over the last 24 years.  

In 2022, Sadhguru expanded the scale of his ecological impacts to a global footprint when he launched the Save Soil movement. Soil is the source of 95% of food, and the looming threat of soil extinction puts life on planet Earth at risk. Sadhguru embarked on a 100-day, 30,000 km solo bike journey reaching 3.91 bn people. The movement is urging nations to mandate 3-6% organic content in agricultural soils around the world through policy-driven initiatives. To that effect, Save Soil Movement has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with 10 Indian states, and 81 nations have come forward to work towards saving soil.