Time’s Woman of the Year, Ayisha Siddiqa, discusses her activism for people and the planet. The 24-year-old comes from a rural community in northern Pakistan and is a climate and human rights defender seeking to change the dialogue around climate change through poetry. Siddiqa is the founder of the Global Youth Activist coalition and co-founder of Polluters Out and Fossil Free University. One of the key factors that motivated her activism were the multiple pollution-related deaths and illnesses in her family, including blood cancer, polio, appendicitis, and tetanus. Siddiqa attributes the rise in such cases to biohazards from upriver coal and hydrogen dams built along northern Pakistan’s ancestral fresh waterways. She describes poetry as “a way to keep going,” a vehicle for her activism and a way to find endurance and inspiration during the anthropocene. Siddiqa explains that “If Climate anxiety is anything, it’s a signifier of sanity. And for me turning to poetry was a way to find hope.”
