FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE ACTIVISTS STAGE GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE

Activists from the Fridays for Future (FFF) movement staged a global climate strike on Friday, March 19, 2021, under the motto #NoMoreEmptyPromises, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

The protests - planned in over 50 countries - were held amid the challenge of restrictions on public gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers want supporters to protest against the promotion of fossil fuels and what they consider to be failed climate policies. They also demand the establishment of "annual, binding carbon budgets based on the best available science."

Images on social media showed how young people from countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia and Sri Lanka took part in highlighting the day, with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who inspired the global movement calling for action on climate change, retweeting images of the strike on her Twitter account.

In her home city of Stockholm, a handful of members of the Swedish Fridays for Future movement placed placards on the central Sergels Torg square. One read "Science not Silence," another said, "Time is running out."

Thunberg, 18, tweeted: "School strike week 135. Today is the global strike! We're striking in shifts to avoid big crowds and keep our numbers as low as possible." The Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in northern Germany posted photos of researchers based in both the Arctic - at the German-French AWIPEV research station on Spitsbergen and the Arctic expedition ship Polarstern (Polaris) - and the Antarctic in support of the protest.

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