Ayisha Siddiqa
The Poet Who Put the Fossil Fuel Industry on Trial
Born on 8 February 1999 in Jhang, Pakistan, Ayisha Siddiqa is a Pakistani-American climate activist, poet and legal researcher. She co-founded Polluters Out, advised the UN Secretary-General on climate from 2023 to 2025, was named a TIME Woman of the Year in 2023, and founded the Future Generations Tribunal.
- 16 min listen
- Climate activist
- Poet
- Rights of future generations
Ayisha Siddiqa’s full 16 min audio biography, The Poet Who Put the Fossil Fuel Industry on Trial, is available on Lyfestori for iOS. Listen to a free preview below.
A life in brief
Ayisha Siddiqa: life and timeline.
She grew up in a tribal community beside the Chenab River in Punjab, where she says polluted water was linked to the deaths of her grandmother and cousins. Her family moved to Coney Island, Brooklyn, a coastal neighbourhood that knew hurricanes. Ayisha Siddiqa started writing poems at thirteen. At twenty she was helping organise New York's 2019 climate strike, and after COP25 she co-founded Polluters Out to push fossil fuel companies out of UN climate talks. In 2022, floods covered a third of Pakistan.
- 1999
Born in Jhang
Born 8 February in Jhang, Punjab, into a tribal community near the Chenab River. She later traces her activism to the river's pollution and the illness and deaths it brought to her family.
- 2019
New York's climate strike
Drawn into student climate organising at Hunter College, she helps lead the youth mobilisation in New York on 20 September, one of the largest climate protests the city had seen.
- 2019
COP25 in Madrid
At the UN climate conference in December she is struck by the visible presence of energy companies while frontline and Indigenous activists are kept at the margins.
- 2020
Polluters Out
Co-founds Polluters Out with Isabella Fallahi and Helena Gualinga, demanding the fossil fuel industry be removed from UN climate negotiations. When the pandemic cancels their first rally, they take the campaign online.
- 2021
Graduates and writes the poem
Earns a BA in political science and English from Hunter College and helps launch Fossil Free University with EarthRights International. Her poem "On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem" spreads through climate circles.
- 2022
Pakistan floods and COP27
Monsoon floods affect about 33 million Pakistanis and kill more than 1,700. In November, at the Children and Youth Pavilion at COP27 in Egypt, her speech on the floods circulates widely.
- 2023
TIME and the UN
Named one of TIME's Women of the Year in March and appointed a youth climate adviser to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, a role she holds until March 2025. She founds the Future Generations Tribunal.
- 2024
Petition to the ICJ
Serves as an expert author on human rights for the People's Petition submitted in the International Court of Justice's advisory proceedings on states' climate obligations. The tribunal holds a People's Assembly.
- 2025
Law school
Studies for a law degree at UCLA School of Law, specialising in human rights and international law, while the Future Generations Tribunal holds hearings in East Africa.
Major achievements
Ayisha Siddiqa: major achievements.
- 01
Polluters Out
The youth coalition she co-founded in 2020 borrowed its logic from the WHO tobacco convention, which shields health policy from the tobacco industry, and argued climate talks need the same protection from fossil fuel companies.
- 02
TIME Woman of the Year
In 2023 TIME named her among its Women of the Year for bringing poetry and storytelling into high-level policy rooms. She was twenty-four.
- 03
Adviser to the UN Secretary-General
From March 2023 to March 2025 she served on António Guterres's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, contributing submissions on climate finance and a just transition.
- 04
Future Generations Tribunal
Founded in 2023, it collects citizen testimony to build legal recognition of the rights of people not yet born, including a People's Assembly in 2024 and an East Africa tribunal in 2025.
- 05
Poetry as advocacy
Her love poem about being asked to "sell the future" on a climate panel was read aloud by marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and shared widely. She also contributed to The Climate Book, edited by Greta Thunberg.
Turning points
Ayisha Siddiqa: defining moments.
- Childhood
A river that made people sick
Her family's land sat near the Chenab, one of Punjab's five rivers. She has said that its polluted water was linked to the deaths of her grandmother and two cousins. She has described the family's move to Brooklyn through the lens of environmental displacement.
- December 2019
Who sits at the table
At COP25 in Madrid she watched corporate energy interests move freely through the summit while frontline voices struggled to be heard. She came home asking why the industry behind the crisis was helping write the solutions, and Polluters Out was the answer.
- 2022
The floods reach home
Monsoon rains made worse by climate change flooded about a third of Pakistan, including land her family had lived on for generations. At COP27 that November, she told delegates in plain terms that their sustainability rhetoric meant little while her people were dying.
- 2023
From protest to law
Inside the UN system as an adviser to the Secretary-General, she started the Future Generations Tribunal and, the same year, applied to law school, finishing her applications during COP28. Her work moved from the streets towards courts and legal recognition.
What you’ll take away
Lessons from Ayisha Siddiqa’s life.
- 01
Ask who is in the room
Her first big campaign didn't demand a new target — it asked why polluters were helping set the targets at all. Changing who sits at the table can matter more than what is said there.
- 02
Tenderness can be a political tool
On a climate panel, asked to sell the future, she offered a love poem. It travelled further than most policy papers, because it gave people something to want, not only something to fear.
- 03
Grief can be put to work
The losses she traces to a poisoned river became the starting point for petitions to the International Court of Justice and a tribunal for future generations.
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FAQ
Frequently asked questions about Ayisha Siddiqa.
Who is Ayisha Siddiqa?
A Pakistani-American climate activist, poet and legal researcher. She co-founded Polluters Out, founded the Future Generations Tribunal and was a youth climate adviser to UN Secretary-General António Guterres from 2023 to 2025.
Where is Ayisha Siddiqa from?
Jhang, in Pakistan's Punjab province, where she was born on 8 February 1999. She grew up near the Chenab River and moved with her family to Coney Island, Brooklyn, as a child.
Is Ayisha Siddiqa a lawyer?
Not yet. She is studying for a law degree at UCLA School of Law, specialising in human rights and international law, and has worked as a legal researcher, including at NYU School of Law's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.
Why was Ayisha Siddiqa named a TIME Woman of the Year?
For bringing poetry and storytelling into climate policy. TIME named her to its 2023 Women of the Year list, months after her COP27 speech about Pakistan's floods spread widely online.
What is the Future Generations Tribunal?
A legal initiative she founded in 2023 to codify the rights of future generations. It gathers testimony from communities through hearings such as a People's Assembly in 2024 and an East Africa tribunal in 2025.
What is Ayisha Siddiqa's poem "On Another Panel About Climate" about?
Imagining a future worth fighting for in the language of love rather than policy. Its full title is "On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem", and it became one of her most widely shared works.
What is Polluters Out?
A global youth coalition she co-founded in 2020 with Isabella Fallahi and Helena Gualinga. It campaigns to remove the fossil fuel industry from UN climate negotiations, modelled on the WHO tobacco convention's protections against industry interference.
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16 min · one sitting