Whole world gathers to protest for faster action on climate change during COP26
Almost every continent in the world has seen activists gather to march for less talk and more real action to overcome climate change.
World leaders are currently at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop26), discussing how nations plan to achieve the Paris Agreement goals set in 2015.
More than 50,000 environmentalists, including Greta Thunberg, have travelled to Glasgow – where the conference is being held – unsatisfied with the commitments made so far.
Amazonian young people from Brazil and Ecuador led a Youth Climate Strike in the Scottish city yesterday, demanding banks stop investing in the ‘destruction’ of their homes.
But today, people from all over the world, including the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, the Netherlands and France, had also gathered in the streets to take a stand.
People are rising up as many of them believe the summit is a ‘PR stunt’, as Greta calls it.
Some are accusing politicians of ‘greenwashing’ – misleading people into believing you are being environmentally friendly.
This has been a prominent theme among activists, who do not think governments and industries are doing enough to combat the climate crisis.
Scientist Rebellion, a civil disobedience group trying to get governments to do something about academics’ damning research, occupied King George V bridge in Glasgow city centre this morning.
Co-founder Tim Hewlett told The Guardian: ‘There have been 25 previous Cops with no measurable impact on GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.
‘In fact, about half of the GHG emissions have been released since COP1 in 1995. So we’re not here to speak truth to power – they already know – but to the powerless, and to raise their voices in turn.’
Similarly, streets in Brussels were occupied by the Belgian wing of Extinction Rebellion.
There were more than 250 events planned worldwide for Saturday – dubbed the Global Day for Climate Justice by the Cop26 Coalition.
The Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines (YACAP) held demonstrations, both online and in person, for its #KliMalaya campaign.
The ‘fight for freedom from climate injustice’ called for richer countries in the global north to deliver on their promises.
Activists called for people to ‘honour our Indigenous People heroes’ who were amoung the first to be at the ‘frontline for the protection of forests and other critical ecosystems’.
Protestors in Indonesia have criticised their own government for not being serious about cutting down on deforestation, despite Indonesia being home to a third of the planet’s rainforests.
Wahyu Perdana, from the Indonesian Forum for Environment, said leaders were ‘paying lip-service’ to tackling climate change while raising production of coal, the dirtiest of the fuels causing global temperatures to rise.
Others in Tibet said racial and climate injustice cannot be separated and need to be tackled together.
Meanwhile Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate spoke out about communities in her country already having to survive the effects of climate change.
She said: ‘It’s already destruction. It’s already suffering. It’s already disaster. Any rise will only make things worse.
‘Leaders rarely have the courage to lead. It takes citizens, people like you and me, to rise up and demand action. And when we do that in great enough numbers, our leaders will move.
‘Until then, we must demand that our leaders treat the climate crisis like our crisis, we must demand that our leaders stop holding meaningless summits and start taking meaningful action.’
In London, thousands of protesters gathered at the Bank of England for the start of a protest through the city, banging steel drums, chanting ‘one solution’.
Many waved Extinction Rebellion banners reading ‘tell the truth’, before marching to Trafalgar Square.
Asad Rehman, spokesperson for the Cop26 Coalition, said: ‘Many thousands of people took to the streets today on every continent demanding that governments move from climate inaction to climate justice.
‘We won’t tolerate warm words and long-term targets anymore, we want action now.’
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