Mumbai: 11-year-old creates mobile app 'Nudge' to encourage people to take care of environment

To do her bit and encourage people to save the environment, an 11-year-old girl from Mumbai has created a mobile app. Young Kaavya Majumder has created the ‘Nudge’ app that encourages people to take care of the environment by taking part in challenges. Based on the nudge theory of behavioural economics, the app aims to reinforce positive behaviour by using indirect suggestions to influence the behaviour of individuals. The app hosts daily challenges that are chosen to help users recycle and save natural resources. In an interview with News18, Majumder stated that she has a lot of faith in humanity. “If we put the right tools in people’s hands, they will fight to save the Earth with passion,” she said. Majumder also said that every individual can take steps to protect natural resources, thus starting a cumulative movement. She added that while the governments have to take steps to make corporations accountable for their environmental impact, individual actions can also help a lot. The idea of ‘Nudge’ came to Majumder as she sought to combine her love for technology and her fight to save natural resources. The app has slowly grown to include features like artificial intelligence for image recognition and trivia to keep users engaged. With the help of her parents and WhiteHat Jr, Majumder has managed to make the app available on Google Playstore. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently released a new report on climate change. The report held human activity to be the unequivocal cause of climate change. According to various scenarios put forward by the IPCC, even if humanity starts decreasing their emissions now, the limit of 1.5C mentioned in the Paris Agreement, will still be overshot by 2030. The report warned that the impact of climate change will be exacerbated in cities. This will lead to the cities experiencing more intense heat waves, rising sea levels and flooding in the near future.