A day after climate strikes convulsed cities across the globe, with hundreds of thousands of young people opting to skip school and take to the streets instead, youth leaders have gathered at the United Nations to demand radical action on climate change.
The UN invited 500 young activists and entrepreneurs to take part in Saturday’s meeting – the first of its kind – at the body’s headquarters in New York.
It came days before a climate action summit scheduled to begin on Monday, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called to seek greater commitments from world leaders on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris accord to avert runaway global warming.
Some four million people filled city streets around the world, organisers said, in what was billed as the biggest-ever protest against the threat posed to the planet by rising temperatures.
Youngsters and adults alike chanted slogans and waved placards in demonstrations that started in Asia and the Pacific, spread across Africa, Europe and Latin America, before culminating in the United States.
Strike organisers 350.org said Friday’s rallies were the start of 5,800 protests across 163 countries over the next week.
The protests will coincide with a landmark UN report due to be unveiled next week which will warn global warming and pollution are ravaging Earth’s oceans and icy regions in ways that could unleash misery on a global scale.
2019 Al Jazeera Media Network