Ameer Shahul

Ameer Shahul is an Indian author who is best known for his work against Unilever in Kodaikanal mercury poisoning. His first non-fiction book titled Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal was published by Pan Macmillan in 2023 . He has been involved with green movements in India since 2002 ranging from ship-breaking to industrial pollution and campaigns against pesticides . 
==Early Life==
Shahul was born in Pangode in Thiruvananthapuram, where one of India’s fierce freedom struggles was fought against the British Raj known as Kallara-Pangode Struggle. He obtained his post-graduation in Marine Biology from Cochin University of Science and Technology and dropped out of Masters in Communications and Journalism from the University of Kerala. Shahul started as a science correspondent with the Press Trust of India (PTI) in Bangalore in the nineties reporting on Indian space and defence programmes and later reporting on the emergence of Information Technology in India. He later shifted to PTI’s headquarters in New Delhi to track developments in Telecommunications in India which had just opened up with the government allowing Mobile telephony for private and international players. He spent brief stints with The Financial Express (India) and AFX, the business section of French news agency, AFP. He also led a team of journalists to transfer and stabilise global operations of Editorial Reference Unit of Thomson Reuters from the United Kingdom and Australia to India when the company shifted part of its operations from other global destinations to Bangalore.
==Kodaikanal mercury poisoning==
Shahul took a break from his journalistic career to join Greenpeace in 2003 to work on a campaign against mercury pollution by Unilever in Kodaikanal, an environmental catastrophe committed by the FMCG major in the hill station of Tamil Nadu which had gained global attention over a period of time . He led the public affairs groups and ex-workers to force the company collect 290 tonnes of mercury waste dumped in and around the forest and the factory site and send back to the United States for permanent retirement in 2003 . This action of sending waste from a developing country to a developed country was widely hailed by the media as ‘reverse dumping'. Shahul along with campaigners like Navroz Mody led environmental and local community groups in lobbying for remediation of the site , and initiated an investigation by the Department of Atomic Energy of Government of India, which found that the mercury levels in the atmosphere of Kodaikanal was up to 2640 times more than what is found in normal conditions . 
With demands for remediation of the factory site and recompense ex-workers, Shahul led a team of activists and volunteers to spook the annual general body meeting of Hindustan Unilever in Mumbai in 2004. Consequent to these pressures and the clearances by courts, the company began working with the regulatory body Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to remediate the soil, de-contaminate and scrap the thermometer-making equipment at the Kodaikanal site. 
==Other campaigns==
During his stint in Greenpeace, he had also campaigned against the practices of ship breaking in Indian shores for hazardous waste disposal , and against ground water exploitation and waste dumping by companies like Coca-Cola . He also brought to notice the worst incident of a a state owned company continue to manufacturing the globally banned DDT . 
==Public Policy Leader==
Shahul led the Government and Regulatory affairs in the region for IBM and also headed the External Affairs and Communications function for Nissan Motors in India and Renault Nissan Automotive India, driving advocacy efforts for the companies in the region. He also worked with other global companies in retail and healthcare, leading efforts in global trade and intellectual property rights. 
==Author==
In 2023, Pan Macmillan published his first book titled, Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal. Excerpts from the book have been published by media channels such as Deccan Herald, Down to Earth (magazine) , The News Minute , Scroll.in, ThePrint , MoneyControl and Signal . The book received rave reviews and ratings from environmentalists, ecologists, climate change activists and general readers alike. In Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal, he describes the incident of mercury pollution in the hill station as the worst environmental crimes perpetrated by a global corporation in the region in recent times akin to the Bhopal disaster . The book makes an effort to use the Kodaikanal incident to educate the public about the dangers of environmental crime for profits, besides chronicling it as a chapter of Indian environmental history. 
Indian parliamentarian and author Shashi Tharoor and renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva have endorsed it, so is Erik Solheim, former executive director of United Nations Environment Programme and former environment minister of Norway . Deccan Herald described the book as 'a blunt and bold account of a tragedy', while Malayala Manorama termed it as the gripping take on an industrial tragedy, and of green resistance. 
His second book, tentatively tiled, Syringe: the Great Indian Journey of Vaccines has also been contracted by Pan Macmillan . 
He has also written about the resistance of local communities against uranium mining in India, extensive blogs on emerging technologies through IBM Blogs , Medium and other digital platforms 
Category:People from Thiruvananthapuram
Category:Cochin University of Science and Technology alumni
Category:University of Kerala alumni
Category:Author