The COP26 climate conference which is being held in Glasgow (Scotland) is the occasion for meetings between leaders but also for demonstrations.
This Saturday, the Scottish city, but also other cities around the world are the setting for rallies to defend the climate.
The demonstrators call for action in the face of climate change which threatens humanity.
From Sydney (Australia) to Paris via London (United Kingdom), Nairobi (Kenya) or Mexico City (Mexico), more than 200 events are planned, according to the coalition of organizations behind the mobilization.
It is about demanding "climate justice" and immediate measures for communities already affected by climate change, especially in the poorest countries of the South.
“It's a
good cause,
” says Jenny, a 22-year-old apprentice in administration in Norway, who came to Glasgow.
"This is our future and it is my future and that of my children," she said, deeming "important" that activists in rich countries "fight for" those in poor countries, some of whom "do not have the means to stay that long ”in Scotland.
"Enough of the blah, real climate action now"
In Sydney and Melbourne, demonstrators disguised as a pile of coal or as Scott Morrison, the Australian Prime Minister and a great defender of the mining industry, denounced the COP26 as being "a comedy" and their head of government as "an absolute shame. ".
"Enough of the blah, real climate action now," proclaimed a banner.
Words similar to those used in Glasgow by Greta Thunberg the day before.
VIDEO.
"The COP26 is a failure", says Greta Thunberg in front of thousands of young demonstrators
In Paris, several associations mobilized a few hundred people to increase pressure on COP26 negotiators and demand “climate justice”.
"Inactive at COP26, dying in 2050", it was notably written on a banner.
Activists from Attac, Alternatiba, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, L214, Oxfam, ATD Quart Monde, Solidarity unions or the CGT met from noon in front of the Town Hall square under a bright sun.
Giant portraits of several leaders, the American Joe Biden, the French Emmanuel Macron, the British Boris Johnson, the Chinese Xi Jinping or the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro have been deployed.
"Climate
inaction
= crime against the living"
Rally for climate justice and denounce the inaction of leaders.
# COP26
Presence of the presidential candidate @yjadot.
#marcheclimat #justiceclimatique pic.twitter.com/rkCZYVRIS7
- Clément Lanot (@ClementLanot) November 6, 2021
The demonstrators, some of whom came with their families, then sounded the “climate alarm” with whistles and cries, carried by percussions. Placards proclaimed "no nature, no future", "climate justice, social justice, everything is linked" or more simply a simple "SOS". A climatologist, Jean-Baptiste Sallée, rose to the rostrum to warn about the “historical responsibility” of the generation in power to make decisions allowing an effective fight against climate change. He was followed by Jean-Francois Julliard of Greenpeace or Roland Sjabere, customary chief of the village of Prosperity in Guyana.
In South Korea, 500 people marched through the streets of the capital, Seoul, to demand immediate help from populations already hit hard by the effects of global warming.
A thousand people gathered in London in front of the Bank of England with signs calling for “less talk, more action”.
A "greenwashing festival"
A demonstration bringing together thousands of young people who came to cry out about the climate emergency had already been organized on Friday in Glasgow.
"It is no secret that the COP26 is a failure," said on this occasion the face of the youth movement for the climate, the Swedish Greta Thunberg.
She described the COP26 as a “celebration (…) of blah blah” and a “greenwashing festival”, that is to say the fact of presenting oneself as ecological in form and communicating on it, but without changing anything at the bottom of one's actions.
It reacted after commitments, sometimes with vague outlines, by groups of countries to fight against deforestation, reduce methane emissions into the atmosphere or slow down the consumption of fossil fuels.
Read also Agreement on deforestation at COP26: a great promise, but for what tomorrow?
The challenges of COP26 are numerous in a context of a global pandemic which has weakened poor countries already vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
200 delegations are studying in particular how to limit, as provided for in the Paris Agreement of 2015, global warming to well below + 2 ° C, and if possible to + 1.5 ° C.
Every tenth of an additional degree of warming counts and has its share of consequences, heat waves, fires or floods.
However, according to the latest estimates from the UN (United Nations Organization), which must be updated with the latest promises, the world is currently heading towards a “catastrophic” warming of + 2.7 ° C.
