Last Friday, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg took part in her latest school strike, after almost five years (251 weeks, to be exact) of mobilization. “When I started striking in 2018, I could never have imagined throwing the start of anything. It was after mobilizing myself every day for three weeks that a small group was formed and together we made the decision to go on strike every Friday,” she explains on her Twitter account.
Now 20, Greta Thunberg was far from imagining, in August 2018, the success of the movement she helped launch, Fridays for Future. As of 2019, several million students are taking part in school strikes in 180 countries around the world. “The spark took and the mass effect imposed itself very quickly, analyzes Nicolas Haeringer, campaign director for the platform which campaigns for renewables, 350.org. In a few months, the school strikes succeeded in doing what we had never succeeded before! »
Become aware that we can fight against climate change in 15 years
Moreover, where the associations committed to the climate tended to carefully prepare “one major global mobilization per year”, with the backing of communication campaigns, the school strikes spontaneously imposed “an extremely supported, which we find today in the actions organized by Just Stop Oil And Last renovation “. Was the cadence a little too intense? With the Covid pandemic, the movement lost momentum and the number of demonstrators declined sharply. In Paris, only 200 to 300 people were thus mobilized during the September 2022 march, far from the 30,000 to 40,000 at the beginning of the movement, in 2019. However, mobilizations continue: on June 9, in Nancy, on May 12 , in Dijon and Grenoble, on April 21, in Strasbourg… And March 10a day of national strike for the thermal renovation of buildings mobilized schoolchildren, college and high school students in 115 cities in France, according to its organizers.
In France, one of the two spokespersons for Fridays for Future, Pablo Flye, remembers how the strike launched by Greta Thunberg allowed him to realize that, even at 15, “we could not just suffer climate change “. “But on the contrary, to be an actor in the fight, with a very simple mode of action and codes that correspond to young people, such as organization via social networks, he explains. And if other movements have since spread, the climate strike remains a gateway for young people. »
A new generation is coming
The school strikes were also “incredible accelerated training in mobilization on climate justice, whether in terms of speaking out, press relations or communication”, continues Nicolas Haeringer. Elsewhere in the world, these mobilizations have propelled other activists from the school benches… to the stands of the UN: this is the case of theUgandan Vanessa Nakate, aged 25 and named a “goodwill ambassador” by the international organization last year. This is particularly mobilized against Eacop (for “East African Crude Oil Pipeline”), this mega pipeline project intended to transport crude oil from new Ugandan wells to the port of Tanga, Tanzania, displacing several thousand of people and ravaging natural ecosystems.
I’German activist Luisa Neubauer was already a geography student when she began to initiate the marches across the Rhine in 2019, after meeting Greta Thunberg at the climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018. Lately, she has been particularly active in the fight against the opening of a coal mine in Lützerath, in Germany. And on spotify, his podcast on the climate, “1.5 Grad” (“1.5 degrees”, in French), is a hit, with nearly 450,000 listeners.
Mathematics graduate, Filipino activist Mitzi Jonell Tan has stood out at the last two COPs, by demanding justice for the countries of the South, the first victims of the climate crisis. At only 11 years old, the Indian Licypriya Kangujam regularly calls out to the government of his country, plagued this spring by “the worst heat wave in the history of Asia”, according to climatologist Maximiliano Herrera. Some of these new figureheads in the fight against climate change will also be gathered in Paris June 22 and 23, on the occasion of the Summit for a new global financial pactwhich aims to unlock new financing for the adaptation of the most vulnerable countries.
“I will continue to demonstrate every Friday”
You can’t go on school strike all your life… spokespersons for the French branch of Fridays For Future also passed the baccalaureate. Alice Dubois has been studying at Sciences Po on the Nancy campus since the start of the 2021 academic year. international tax on financial transactions – an activity quite distinct from its commitment to Fridays for future, which wishes to avoid any political clawback. “The millions of demonstrators of the climate strikes have not disappeared, they are mobilizing in different ways, all over the world, in the associative and political spheres…” concludes Pablo Flye.
Unsurprisingly, Greta Thunberg will not stop mobilizing for the climate either, once her baccalaureate is in her pocket. In recent months, the activist was, together with her friend Luisa Neubauer, fighting against the reopening of the coal mine in Lützerath. She also got involved in support of the Sami, the indigenous people of the Far North, expropriated to build a wind farm in Norway. “I will continue to demonstrate every Friday, although this is no longer technically a school climate strike. We simply have no choice. The fight has only just begun, ”she concludes on Twitter.