On 20th September, the Global Climate Strike gathered momentum for the week long activities all over the world with 4 million people coming out on streets to demand climate justice.
‘Fridays For Future’ the volunteer led global movement, initiated by the 16 year old girl Greta Thunberg, who bunked school every Friday to protest alone in front of the Swedish Parliament so that the government reflects the urgency of the global climate crisis in their environmental policies, carried out the worldwide Climate Strike Week from 20th to 27th of September 2019, where more than 7,000,000 people participated globally.
Moving along with the globe, the strike was taken up in the city of Guwahati in India by a core team of 6, where more than 300 people took part from different institutions and age groups. The crowd took the attention towards their demands with slogans like,
"No more coal, no more oil. Keep the carbon in the soil”.
The team successfully conducted a plastic-free, ecofriendly strike with demands of climate justice, to declare climate emergency, strict implementation of Waste Segregation Rules 2016, ban single use plastics, extended producer’s responsibility, stop deforestation in the name of development; end subsidies to fossil fuel companies and reduce dependency on coal for power generation. The Global Climate Strike ended on 27th of September with a ‘Music for a Cause’ concert and other activities like Children Drama communicating the drastic situation if the humanity does not wake up to save their only home, the Mother Earth.
And just after one week of the Global Climate Strike, Extinction Rebellion, a socio –political movement across the Globe, in co-operation with Fridays for Future, demands Climate Emergency across India.
Rebels from 11 cities spread out across the country engaged in an Indian Citizens’ Declaration of Climate and Ecological Crisis on the Sunday. From students to senior citizens, activists from Vizag, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Panjim, Pune, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal and Chandigarh stood in solidarity with the ongoing destruction of the Aarey Forest, read out declarations of crises and engaged in a number of different artistic performances to communicate the urgency of the situation.
The Declaration was accompanied by a number of different performative pieces, including the ‘Die-Ins’ which were performed in all above mentioned locations. The Die-in acts are symbolic acts of expression of grief and solidarity with all those lives, human and non-human, that are being lost due to the human-made crisis.
Extinction Rebellion India’s first demand to the governments, titled 'TELL THE TRUTH', is to put their weight behind the latest climate science and declare a country-wide Climate and Ecological Crisis and communicate the gravity, scale and urgency of the situation transparently to the public, and to all institutions and corporations.
The declarations read out the importance of acknowledging that we are in a crisis, especially given our status as one of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries, losing human lives everyday as a direct result of the anthropogenic crisis. Only when the people know the truth about their disastrous reality will they be able to prepare for the future and take steps to solve it.
Another powerful action that chapters engaged in was a funeral ceremony. In Goa, Bhubaneswar, Vizag and Delhi, rebels walked silently in sombre processions and paid homage to the 164 murdered environmental activists from 2018, extinct species and the planet. There was vigorous support across the board for the Aarey forest under attack in Mumbai while a couple of chapters also had independent musicians perform.
The Indian declaration day was part of a wider internationally coordinated Declaration and 'Die-In' action that involved cities from South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Canada, Sweden, Peru, Colombia, Australia, U.S.A, Hungary, Israel, and Austria, with about 2,500 rebels involved.
The Demands of XR & FFF are direct and clear.
The science is clear. And our activities as a single species among countless have fundamentally altered planetary ecosystems.
We are causing the sixth mass extinction.
Glacier ice are melting at the highest rate in the entire history, islands are predicted to be lost due to rising sea level, biodiversity is being annihilated and species are going extinct at rates never seen before. So this is very high time to take action in order to save humanity and the mother earth and that is what the primary demand of the activist groups is, “TAKE CLIMATE ACTION NOW”.
“Humanity finds itself in the middle of an event unprecedented in its history. Unless we act now we will ensure the destruction of all we hold dear: this nation, its people, our ecosystems and the future of generations to come.”
Read the complete declaration here
Thank you@biswajyoti_baruah.
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Biswajyoti baruah