Supriya Sahu is a simple-looking IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, but she embodies love, the love for nature, and her love is intractable, unnegotiable. And the best part of it is that she revels in displaying her concerns for it through her actions, so much so that its reverberation was heard at the United Nations when she was bestowed the UN Champions of the Earth award, 2025, for inspiration and action. This is the United Nations’ highest environmental honour, given to her by the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi on Wednesday.
Truly speaking, despite being a bureaucrat, Sahu believes in romanticizing life. She seems to possess a mind-set that appreciates even small things and turns mundane tasks into enjoyable rituals. That is perhaps the reason why she has been serving as additional chief secretary in the Environment, Climate Change, and Forests Department for the last four and a half years.
The UN says she is an inspiration, but she says her inspiration comes from people who stood by her from the local village and from those children who look up with the blink in their eyes.
Her profile shared by the UN says her romance with nature started in her early childhood, when her family travelled around the country for her father’s job. And her Instagram account is filled with posts about elephants. She adores elephants as she learns about resilience, family bonding and leadership from them.
But she gets pained when she finds severe damage that irresponsible human behaviour inflicts on animals. She recalls her time as the District Collector in the Nilgiris District when she saw animals eating plastic garbage, and she realised that our planet is choking. That experience became transformational for her, she says.
Her initiatives showcased how integrated governance and nature-based solutions, along with a mix of low- and high-tech interventions, can protect vulnerable communities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the UN, this award is the recognition of her groundbreaking leadership in subnational climate action, restoring ecosystems, and scaling sustainable cooling innovations across Tamil Nadu.
By Dinesh Kumar
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