Climate activists demonstrate in front of Delhi Secretariat

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New Delhi, Sep 24 (IANS) Close to a hundred young climate activists reached the Delhi Secretariat on Friday to seek the status of their list of demands presented to the Delhi government in March.

"On March 19, we came here with a list of seven demands in total for a greener and sustainable Delhi. That time, five of us were let into the Secretariat, where we met Reena Gupta (Advisor to the Delhi Government). Our petition was signed and we were asked for a month's time for the petition to be reviewed. However, due to the second wave of Covid-19, the meeting could not take place and since then we have not been updated even once on those demands," Srijani Dutta, a Youth for Climate activist and a student of sociology at The Hindu College, told IANS.

"Inside the Secretariat, there was a very tokenistic response of signing the copy of demands. However, nothing followed after that. Therefore, this time we wanted the officials to come outside of the Secretariat so that they could be held accountable in front of everyone," said the 19-year-old, adding that the group also started a twitter storm, tagging @CMODelhi (Chief Minister's Office Delhi) and @AapKaGopal (Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai), but to no avail.

Just as the conversation around Climate Change and Global Warming started gaining momentum across the world, a series of strikes and protests were proposed to be organised on a chosen day or week by several global, national and local environment groups at their respective places. The aim of these series of protests that now take place every six months is to highlight the green issues to their elected representatives, asking them to act on the climate change crisis on an emergency basis.

Although toned down due to the pandemic for the last two years, the climate activists aged between 19-30 years were as active as ever with their street art, recycled placards with catchy phrases and pride flags outside of the Chief Minister's Office.

Similar protests were carried out in 17 other locations, including Bengaluru, Jammu, Patna, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Agra, Meerut, Kolkata, Thane, Thiruvananthapuram, among many others.

The demand draft was prepared by the young activists of Fridays for Future (FFF) and Youth for Climate (YFC), India. It emphasised the need to reinvigorate participatory mechanisms around development projects by means of revitalising the ward sabhas, eliminating systematic encroachment via local communities participation in deciding what's best for their area, carrying out a tree census, formulating a Heat Action Plan to prevent heat-related deaths, systemic reform in waste management practice, starting the six packages under Interceptor Sewer Project (ISP) for a cleaner Yamuna and reduction in private vehicle usage.

Another activist named Akash Arora (25) who runs a sustainable agriculture initiative in Uttar Pradesh shared the reason behind his participation in today's strike. "I believe this issue is bigger than all of us. We all will be impacted in one way or the other by climate change. This is also the reason why I chose to work in sustainable agriculture as people often complain about how chemicals are used in fertilisers and manure to produce almost everything that they eat. Other than that even a minor fluctuation in the weather, in terms of rain or heat can devastate the crops, which affects the livelihood of farmers."

As the strike came to an end, FFF coordinator, Laksh said that two of their people were called inside the Secretariat building this time as well. "All we seek is accountability but I am not too hopeful about it."

On the inclusiveness of the climate strike movement in India, Laksh said: "Climate issue is a very intersectional issue and those who feel the whole brunt of the climate crisis are the marginalised communities like the LGBTQ+. Therefore, intersectionality be it in terms of class, caste or gender, needs to be brought to the centre of the discussion. That is why we have queer people in our groups who advocate for their rights and we incorporate their expertise in our demands as well."

During the 2019 global strike, more than 14,000 people signed up for 26 events that took place across India and over 2,000 students had come together to demand Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare an immediate climate emergency in the country.

--IANS

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