OBESSU Supports the Global Strike for Future
The 24th of May will be a special Friday for the World. After months of activities and protests all across the planet, it will be time for the Second Global Strike for Future!
This huge movement, inspired by the actions of Greta Thunberg, currently involves millions of young activists, most of whom are school students. OBESSU has been glad of giving support to School Students in Europe and to their organisations in a decisive moment for our Planet.
Extreme weather, melting of the poles and rising sea levels, desertification, changes in ecosystems and loss of biodiversity are already affecting our lives, showing that climate change is real.
For decades a blind economical perspective based on unlimited growth influenced negatively our production systems. The idea of putting all the resources on the market, without taking care of the effects on the environment, made our common lifestyle unsustainable.
On the other side, national governments didn’t even try to limit these dangerous processes, without any kind of long-term approach. While a limited “green” sector is getting some space in our economies, the mainstream productions and trades are based on high pollution and frenetic consumption of the limited resources of our Planet.
The European Union, with its first attempt to give clear rules, is a step ahead compared to other global actors who are not recognising what’s happening. For example, the progressive ban of single-use plastic is something that will concretely make more sustainable our lives, but it’s not enough. We are all in a globalised world, that obliges us to go beyond our personal lifestyle and even national production systems, to think about policies for a globally integrated market.
As school students, we will be most affected by what’s happening. It has been already said a lot, we are not just the future, we are the present, we see what’s happening and we don’t want to let it continue. We are organising everywhere to make clear our right to our planet.
We are standing against the idea that there is no alternative because we won’t remain passive while our lands, our cities, our future are stolen.
Once again, OBESSU calls its Member Organisations and all School Students in Europe to join the strike and wants to remind education policy-makers that environmental education should be in the school curricula and at the core of School Student activism in these dangerous times. It is fundamental to make this topic really owned by school students, teachers and everyone.
Fridays for Future put this topic at the top of the public debate, it is the time to make our voices heard, with a strong, inclusive, grassroots mobilization. The success of the First Global Strike inspires us, and this movement is already renewing young activism.
We need to inform our communities, to discuss, to understand that there is something to be done.
Join the strike on May 24th!
RESOURCES
OBESSU’s manifesto for the European Elections has a section on Climate Change:
https://www.obessu.org/site/assets/files/2535/manifesto.pdf
Other references:
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/may-july-2017/africa-feeling-heat-climate-change
https://bios.fi/bios-governance_of_economic_transition.pdf
https://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-could-flip-mediterranean-lands-to-desert-1.20894
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/efe/content/european-parliament-votes-single-use-plastics-ban_en
https://www.obessu.org/resources/news/school-students-for-the-environment-obessus-reaction/
