Climate Conference COP26 in Glasgow: Worldwide Protests – Politics

Thousands of people around the world have re-emphasized their demand for more climate protection with large-scale protests. As part of a global day of action, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the Scottish city of Glasgow on Saturday, where the world climate conference COP26 has been taking place for a week. Equipped with banners, flags and signs with climate messages as well as rain jackets against the British weather, the protesters there called for more climate justice for people in poorer regions of the world at the halfway point of the conference.

Protesters in Glasgow.

(Photo: Andrew Milligan / dpa)

The organizers of the “COP26 Coalition” spoke of more than 100,000 participants in the protest march in the Scottish city. The police initially did not provide an estimate of the number of participants. Many thousands of people came together for climate academies elsewhere in the world, including in Amsterdam and Paris, Seoul, Nairobi, Sydney, London and other British cities. According to the organizers, more than 300 actions were planned for Saturday around the globe.

“System change, not climate change!” Read a large banner at the head of a protest march in London. Similar messages were also found elsewhere. Everywhere participants shouted one of the most famous slogans of the climate movement: “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!”

Countries in Africa, Asia and South America, for example, are already feeling the climate crisis very strongly

“The era of injustice is over”, wrote the “COP26 Coalition”, which is a network of different organizations and campaigns, on Twitter. “We need climate protection that works for all of us, not just for the people with the most money in their pockets.”

Many countries, for example in Africa, Asia and South America, are already feeling the climate crisis very strongly – although these countries, with their far lower emissions, have contributed significantly less to climate change than industrialized countries such as Germany and the USA, but also China. The climate movement Fridays for Future therefore demands that richer countries do significantly more for the climate and also provide enough money so that poorer countries can cope with the consequences of climate change.

In a speech in Glasgow, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate emphasized that the global south was “at the forefront of the climate and supply crisis”. But that is not reflected on the front pages of the newspapers, she criticized.

COP26 Coalition Protestors Take Part In The Global Day of Action for Climate Justice

Vanessa Nakate.

(Photo: Christopher Furlong / Getty Images)

Last year, Nakate accused the media of racism because she was cut out of a photo with other prominent climate activists such as Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer.

At the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, around 200 countries are fighting over how the goal of limiting global warming to a tolerable level of a maximum of 1.5 degrees can still be achieved. The conference is scheduled to end on November 12th.

Already on Friday, thousands of people at a climate academy in Glasgow demanded more speed from the states in terms of climate protection. The leading climate activist Greta Thunberg from Sweden had again expressed criticism of the conference in a speech to the demonstrators. It is “a greenwashing festival of the global north, a two-week celebration of the Business as usual and the blah blah, “she said.

Thunberg’s German colleague Luisa Neubauer also drew a devastating interim balance after a week’s climate conference. “As expected, a lot revolves around more or less empty speeches,” said Neubauer New Osnabrück Newspaper. The executive development minister Gerd Müller (CSU) also criticized what has been achieved so far. “The emerging resolutions are not sufficient to achieve the 1.5 degree target,” he told the editorial network in Germany.

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