Fridays For Future returns for another global climate strike

Part of a hopeful new wave of change, the movement is preparing for a day of action this Friday, organised around the theme of #NoMoreEmptyPromises.

During the last few years, the new wave of youth-led climate justice movements has introduced fresh enthusiasm and innovative tools in the fight to save our planet.

With social media and online activism their go-to modes of spreading awareness and inciting change, the uptick in digitally savvy Gen Zers joining such communities across the globe has catapulted the call for action into a heightened sense of urgency.

Determined to put central governments and corporate giants under pressure to co-operate, not even a pandemic has managed to hinder the vigour of campaigns aiming to challenge the law and these groups have remained relentless in their mission to have their voices heard loud and clear.

Spearheading this is Fridays For Future (FFF), a global climate strike movement founded in 2018 when Greta Thunberg first created a stir for criticising society’s unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity of the current climate crisis. It was, in fact, Thunberg who started the hashtag #FridaysForFuture in an effort to encourage her fellow youth to join her in her plight.

Three years later we’ve seen countless successful demonstrations take place with students at the helm, including a ground-breaking crowdfunded case steered by a team of activists aged eight to 21 asking that 33 countries make more ambitious emissions cuts.

Armed with these feats under their belts, FFF is now preparing for their seventh Global Climate Strike on March 19, around the theme of #NoMoreEmptyPromises.

This, in the midst of the various public health, socio-political, and economic crises that the world continues to face, will demand immediate and ambitious action from world leaders. FFF wants to highlight the importance of doing so in light of the weather-and-climate-induced disasters that devastated various countries in 2020, from the wildfires that afflicted parts of Australia, North America, and Latin America, to the droughts in Africa, to the storms that devastated Central America and Southeast Asia.