COP26 protests go global as first week of climate summit draws to a close

Greater than half one million individuals throughout the UK took half in local weather marches Saturday to protest the inaction of leaders and negotiators attending the United Nations’ COP26 local weather convention this week. The protesters had been a part of a International Day Motion that noticed greater than 300 totally different demonstrations happen around the globe, with organizers estimating the whole variety of members to stretch into hundreds of thousands.

Protestors had been demanding motion from world leaders and governments, who they really feel aren’t assembly commitments. These embrace maintaining will increase in world temperature beneath 1.5 levels Celsius and offering creating international locations, which did not trigger the local weather disaster however are struggling the worst on account of it, the funding they should adapt and survive.

As local weather change takes maintain, with rising sea ranges and extra excessive climate occasions inflicting droughts, floods and forest fires, protestors who collectively are a part of the climate justice movement, need pressing change. Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden and different world leaders attended COP26, however regardless of a number of agreements and bulletins popping out of the summit, Greta Thunberg and different activists have denounced the summit as a failure and a “PR occasion.”

In Glasgow, Scotland, the place the UN local weather summit is happening, organizers estimated that about 100,000 individuals took half in protests on town’s streets. Individuals confronted winds and rain to stroll greater than 2.5 miles from Kelvingrove Park to Glasgow Inexperienced, the place a rally gave a platform to leaders of Indigenous communities and different civil society teams, together with Black Lives Matter and commerce unions.

Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate spoke on the rally, describing how, in her house nation, a college the place she’d organized to have photo voltaic panels put in had been destroyed by storms. However she maintained the identical message of hope from her speech yesterday, following the Fridays for Future rally.

“Even deniers will begin to see what we see, their eyes will probably be opened and enlightened by our persistence and fact, they usually will not deny anymore,” Nakate mentioned. “They’re going to be part of us on this battle.”

Asad Rehman, one of many organizers of Saturday’s International Day of Motion, spoke as properly, declaring the start of a brand new local weather justice motion and an finish to the period of injustice. “The story of Glasgow is just not the story of the local weather negotiations or the story of the convention of the polluters,” he mentioned. “It is the story of us, the convention of individuals.”

“There’s no person coming to avoid wasting us,” Rehman mentioned. “We’re those which might be wanted.”