Improving the environment is the key to improving livelihoods, and vice versa.
When Rajesh Shah started trying to improve the planet, climate change wasn’t yet being discussed. But he noticed something early on: that poverty and the environment are linked. “My thesis is simple,” he says. “Improve the quality of natural resources by organizing the poor and you kill two birds with one stone: improve the quality of life for the poor and improve the quality of the environment.” Rajesh, and his organization, VIKAS Centre for Development, has taken this upward cycle thesis and made it a reality for thousands of people, and thousands of hectares of land, across Gujarat in India. “ It’s a journey to discover myself,” he says of his work. “to help find out how I can engage myself with these people who really matter, to change their lives and, in the process, change mine.”