Inspired by Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old student Aman Sharma started a petition on Change.org in May to address the increasing heat, dryness, pollution, and water scarcity. He launched the campaign to pressure the government to take action for the sake of future survival. Sharma's demands to the environment ministry include expanding the country's green cover and meeting commitments under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming. Despite the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change not responding to requests for comment, Sharma's petition has gained over 170,000 signatures. With support from film personalities like Nathalie Kelley and some Bollywood names, Sharma hopes to gain the attention of Hollywood environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio next. On Wednesday, DiCaprio shared a photo on Instagram depicting women in Chennai, a city in southern India, struggling to draw water from a nearly empty well. This highlights the daily challenges faced by many residents. Chennai has been in the global spotlight due to its main reservoirs drying up, primarily because of insufficient monsoons in 2018. This has led to water rationing. A report by government think-tank NITI Aayog last year predicted that Chennai, along with 20 other cities, would run out of groundwater by 2020. The report also warned of a severe long-term water crisis in India, putting 600 million people at risk of facing water shortages. In addition, a heatwave in the north has claimed the lives of at least 36 people this year, with New Delhi experiencing record-breaking temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit). Jitendra Sharma, a well-known Instagram influencer based in Mumbai, recently initiated a petition that garnered nearly 300,000 signatures by Friday. He expressed optimism that the government would soon declare a climate emergency, emphasizing the urgency of the situation and pointing to other countries that have already taken similar steps. In a gesture towards the growing activism among young people in Europe, Britain's parliament declared a symbolic climate change "emergency" in May. Environmentalist Chandra Bhushan defined a climate emergency as the prioritization of climate change in policy and planning decisions. Bhushan from the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi stated that the Indian government will need to acknowledge the crisis and create an action plan. He emphasized that India is facing difficulties and even if the government doesn't recognize the climate emergency currently, they will eventually have to address it.