Many youth climate groups have become more prominent in recent years. For instance, there have been school strikes for climate organised by activists such as Disha Ravi. In 2008, the India Youth Climate Network was established, seeking to bring awareness to climate change through workshops, training, and "climate satsangs". Other prominent youth groups include Fridays for Future India, which has 60 local chapters across India, and Extinction Rebellion, which has 14 groups in Indian states and cities. These groups organise approximately monthly strikes, modelling the Fridays for Future movement in Europe.

Youth movements have seen pushback from the government. In 2020, the Indian government blocked the website of Futures for Friday for 2 weeks, as well as the website of Let India Breathe–another youth organisation–for 26 days. Disha Ravi, a 22-year-old member of Fridays for Future, was arrested in 2021 on charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy in connection to a farmers' protest toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg. Also in 2021, warrants were issued against Nikita Jacob and Shantanu Muluk, members of Extinction Rebellion.

Tribal people in India's remote northeastern state, Meghalaya, honoured former US Vice President Al Gore in 2007 with an award for promoting awareness on climate change with his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." The leaders honoured him due to their concerns about how climate change will affect their homeland, and for how the documentary illustrates the devastating effects of climate change on the globe.

In 2005, the Dandakaranya Movement, a tree planting campaign, was started by Indian politician Balasaheb Thorat, as part of the UN Environment Programme's Billion Tree Campaign. They had planted 90 million seeds as of 2007.

Environmental casteism, which is an anti-caste movement that explores the intersection between caste and resource distribution, has been gaining prominence in recent years. Contemporary Indian environmental policies tend to be caste-blind. According to earth sciences scholar Mukul Sharma, this caste-blind environmentalism is harmful for how it fails to take into account how resources are unevenly distributed between different castes. In response Dalit communities have begun to advocate for their perspectives through activism. According to scholar Mehebub Sahana, this movement aims to counter the "exclusionary nature of Hindu nationalist environmentalism [which] deepens socio-economic inequalities."

The state of Jharkhand has a large movement of organisations campaigning for Adivasi rights to land and forest resources. For example, the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee (JMACC) campaigns against corruption of extractive development processes, organises citizen tribunals, and demands compensation. In the state of Chhattisgarh, there is the Chhattisgarh Muki Morcha trade union, a pan-Indian grassroots movement called Ekta Parishad, and the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan group which agitates coal mining.

However, protests are difficult to organise in Chhattisgarh due to the state's systematic silencing of such events. The rise of corporate-owned media further stifles dissent.

India was ranked seventh among the list of countries most affected by climate change in 2019. India emits about 3 gigatonnes (Gt) CO_2eq of greenhouse gases each year; about two and a half tonnes per person, which is more than twice the greenhouse gasses relative to GDP than the world average. The country emits 7% of global emissions, despite having 17% of the world population. The climate change performance index of India ranks eighth among 63 countries which account for 92% of all GHG emissions in the year 2021.

Temperature rises on the Tibetan Plateau are causing Himalayan glaciers to retreat, threatening the flow rate of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yamuna and other major rivers. A 2007 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report states that the Indus River may run dry for the same reason. Severe landslides and floods are projected to become increasingly common in such states as Assam. Heat waves' frequency and intensity are increasing in India because of climate change. Temperatures in India have risen by 0.7 °C (1.3 °F) between 1901 and 2018.

According to some current projections, the number and severity of droughts in India will have markedly increased by the end of the present century.

Climate change disproportionately affects India's lower caste and indigenous Adivasi populations. Due to flooding and coastal erosion caused by sea level rise, citizens living along the coast are particularly vulnerable to displacement, while the urban poor are most likely to suffer from extreme heat-related diseases.