Climate March | “We are not drowning, we are fighting! “

From Kahnawake to Glasgow via Mount Royal, tens of thousands of people around the world gathered on Saturday, just as the first week of COP26 work ended, to demand greater climate justice.

Lila Dussault
Press

Coralie Laplante
Press

In Glasgow, in the onslaught of wind and rain, around 100,000 people gathered on Saturday, forming a merry procession to the sound of bagpipes and drums. At the head of the parade, a delegation from the Mohawk community of Kahnawake – south of Montreal – led the way. The demonstration took place even as the work of the 26^e climate conference.

“It’s so obvious that indigenous people have the answers, that they, [les leaders], will have to start listening and thinking [en ayant à l’esprit] seven generations ahead, not just immediate needs, ”Karahkwintha, 23, told the English newspaper The Guardian.

“We are here to put Indigenous voices at the forefront of the climate crisis,” said Ohontsakahte, another Kahnawake member, 26.

Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate summed up climate injustice to Agence France-Presse by recalling that Africa was only responsible for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. However, in Uganda, global warming is already causing droughts, floods and landslides, she denounced.

The slogan “Let’s globalize the struggle! Globalize Hope! Reverberated in the form of questions and answers in the crowd, described the Washington post. In her speech, poet and activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, from the Marshall Islands, an island state threatened by rising sea levels, said, “Let me tell you, we will survive the climate crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting. ”

Activism or diplomacy?

At the end of the day on Saturday, the young emblematic activist Greta Thunberg said on Twitter that this march sent a strong signal to the leaders assembled at COP26. “Our so called ‘leaders’ don’t lead – THIS is what leadership looks like,” she tweeted. The day before, she said that COP26 was a failure.

Nevertheless, experts told the Washington post that the UN climate summit negotiations had a real impact on climate forecasts. During the Paris agreement, signed in 2015, the United Nations predicted that the temperature on Earth would warm by 4 ° C by 2100. Today, these forecasts are 2.7 ° C, a figure that is still catastrophic. and very far from the target of 1.5 ° C set out in the Paris agreement.

United Kingdom, France, Australia, Belgium, Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Netherlands: mobilisations took place in several countries around the world on Saturday.

” I want to live “

Under clear skies in Montreal, more than 300 demonstrators formed a human chain at the foot of Mount Royal on Saturday, green ribbon in hand, to call on governments to do more in the fight against climate change.

The event organized by members of the Inter-Union Climate Network (RIC) wished to remind Canada that it will “miss the target” of greenhouse gas reductions set in the Paris climate agreement.

“We are halfway to COP26 […] where there are 190 world leaders pointing their finger at each other, making fine speeches. But what we are asking for are actions, ”insisted Anne Dionne, vice-president of the Centrale des unions du Québec and spokesperson for the RIC.

Stéphanie Cloutier participated in the rally with her two daughters. The teacher and union representative said she was worried about the future of her children and students.

Taking part in the mobilization, the New Democrat deputy for Rosemont, Alexandre Boulerice, said he did not feel any will on the part of Justin Trudeau’s liberals to make a “radical turn”. For Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, the gatherings of recent years have led the Legault government to talk about the environment, unlike the last election campaign, reported The Canadian Press.

The impacts of climate change are also being felt in classrooms, said Catherine Beauvais-St-Pierre, president of the Alliance des professors de Montréal. “We have seen it for several years, when we talk about heatwaves at the start of the school year, heatwaves at the end of the year,” she said.

The motivation for Jonathan Provost’s involvement in the environmental cause is simple. “I want to live,” he said straight away to The Press. “If we don’t do it, nobody is going to do it. Especially not powerful people, ”he continued.

“True democracy takes place in the streets, not in Parliament,” added his friend Liam McMahon. “We cannot let the politicians deal with this,” he concluded.