Action needed on the climate crisis
THE climate crisis is one of the biggest threats to our human rights - it compounds and magnifies existing inequalities, and unless we do something about it today’s children will grow up to see its increasingly frightening effects.
On 20 September, hundreds of thousands of children took part in a global climate strike, asking youth and adults to join them. It has been humbling and inspiring to see the determination with which youth activists across the world have been challenging us all to confront the realities of the climate crisis.
These children and young people are speaking up for what they believe in and care about – and it’s time for the world to listen and act. These are not the leaders of tomorrow but the leaders of today.
Amnesty International UK, alongside UCU branches at Northumbria and Newcastle
universities, is standing in support of all the children and young people who are organising and taking part in school strikes for climate action.
Rallies in Newcastle and elsewhere across the UK also heard from Extinction Rebellion student groups on the urgency of taking action now in the response of a global climate emergency, to which the North East of England over the industrial revolution and beyond has contributed much but can and should also be part of the solutions and behavioural and organisational changes needed in the future.
The global climate crisis threatening human survival is a human rights issue as it endangers key rights to life, health, housing, water sanitation and livelihoods. The people worst affected by the impacts of the global climate crisis, such as mega-storms and floods, heatwaves and forest fires, and prolonged droughts which are becoming more frequent and more severe, are those least responsible for it.
They live in less industrially developed countries, in poor, marginalised communities, and they are young people and future generations.
Furthermore, there are environmental human rights defenders around the world, trying to safeguard the right to a clean and healthy environment, and whose work often puts them in danger from political and corporate vested interests in natural resources.
These young people protesting globally have proved that they are leaders, and now it’s time for all of us to follow their lead. RICHARD KOTTER, Newcastle Amnesty International UK and Senior Lecturer, Northumbria University