The 21st of September, declared by the United Nations to be celebrated as World Peace Day, stands bare and in contradiction to current world scenarios. Injustices against immigrants, minorities, terrorism, false notions of nationalism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and the jarring threat to our environment are all factors that call for the need of immediate action to restore peace worldwide.
The 2019 World Peace day is dedicated to Climate Change, the most pressing threat to human existence! With ‘Climate Change for Peace’ as the theme, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres focused on the current climate emergency as a very potent and real threat to the stability and security of the younger generations and the generations to come.
As a step towards fighting the impending doom, the UN is holding Climate Action Summit on the 23rd of September 2019, at the UN headquarters in New York. The UN has invited world leaders to bring with them actionable and impactful plans for the world to enact and fall in line with the Paris Agreement.
The global face of climate change activism, Greta Thunberg will also be attending the Summit in New York. She started as a single 15-year-old who missed school and sat in front of her country’s parliament in Sweden as a sign of protest. The 16-year-old school going girl brought most fast-forward countries around the world to focus on climate when they didn’t want to.
Greta inspired a worldwide phenomenon of school students missing school on Fridays, ‘Fridays for Future’, to protest and bring their governments to take immediate action on slowing down climate change as a result of global warming. Greta has constantly empowered the climate change movement with her truth and simultaneously held the people in power accountable for the real-time climate emergency.
At the United Nations COP24 Climate Summit in Poland, her words stirred the consciousness of million young minds to reclaim their power to speak, For 25 years, countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions, and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg…”, and to speak for what matters, “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,”.
The movement got picked up across the globe quickly. In mid-March, approximately 1.6 million kids in 125 countries were out on the streets demanding change. The very recent, 20th September worldwide protest also saw school-kids and adults from all walks of life on the road, disrupting the daily on-goings of a Friday across the world and asking the powerful to take action, and take it quickly.
Leah Namugerwa from Uganda, Lilly Platt from the Netherlands, Holly Gillibrand from the UK, Aditya Mukarji from India and several others are working on educating people on the effects of current lifestyle and industrialization, that will come crashing down sooner than later, and on how to take action.
Vishnu PR, the CEO of ‘Change Can Change Climate Change (C5) Foundation’, and a young Indian climate activist will be a part of the Climate Action Summit in New York. Vishnu was chosen to be a participant for the summit as part of the special ‘Green Ticket’.
On the 20th of September 2019, India also witnessed kids in uniforms with placards on the streets asking for the government to listen to the crying woes of climate change. Children carried placards with quotes, puns and facts on the global impact of climate change.
While the world is burning with its differences and the environment health is on a decline, the ones who contribute the greatest to the climate tragedy aren’t the ones bearing the brunt of it as much as the nations striving hard to achieve stability.
There’s still a day for the Climate Action Summit in New York to begin. While the youth change-makers and leaders from various parts of the world are getting ready to put forward their ideas to save the world, today we all must observe the importance of peace and the relation of climate change with peace.
