'No more empty promises': Young activists challenge world leaders over climate change

Record ID: 1633158

  • Title: 'No more empty promises': Young activists challenge world leaders over climate change
  • Date: 19th August 2021
  • Summary: BUTTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - JULY 24, 2021) (REUTERS) FLAMES OVER TREELINE FLAMES IN RED-TINGED FOREST SCENE FLAMES OVER TREES
  • Embargoed: 2nd September 2021 17:33
  • Keywords: COP26 Greta Thunberg UNICEF children climate change drought environment flooding poverty report
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: Various
  • Topics: Climate Change,Climate Policy and Regulation,Environment,General News
  • Reuters ID: LVA008EQY2CZR
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EMBARGOED UNTIL 0001GMT ON 20TH AUGUST
    The world's children cannot afford more empty promises at this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), youth activists including Greta Thunberg said, after a U.N. report found virtually no child will escape the impact of global warming.
    In the first index of its kind, published on Friday (August 20), U.N. children's agency UNICEF found that almost all the world's 2.2 billion children are exposed to at least one climate or environmental risk, ranging from catastrophic floods to toxic air.
    Last week a U.N. climate panel of the world's top atmospheric scientists warned that global warming is dangerously close to spiralling out of control, with deadly heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme events likely to keep getting worse.
    Thunberg, 18, said the UNICEF index confirmed children would be the worst affected, and when world leaders meet in Glasgow in November for COP26 they needed to act rather than just talk.
    "I don't expect them to do that, but I would be more than happy if they could prove me wrong," she told journalists ahead of the index's publication on the third anniversary of Fridays For Future, a now-global youth movement that started with her solo protest outside her Swedish school.
    Thunberg was joined by young activists around the world including Mitzi Jonelle Tan, 23, from the Philippines, who spoke of doing homework by candlelight as typhoons raged outside or fearing drowning in her bed as floodwaters filled her room.
    After months of extreme weather and dire warnings from scientists, world leaders' "empty promises and empty, vague plans" were no longer enough, Tan said.
    "There's no excuse for this COP... to not be the one that changes things."
    The UNICEF index showed around a billion children in 33 mostly African low-emission countries faced a "deadly combination" of extreme weather and existing issues like poverty, making them uniquely vulnerable.
    (Production: Natasa Bansagi)
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