On October 9, Asheer Kandhari, a 15-year-old resident of Delhi, arrived in Copenhagen for the three-day World Mayors’ Summit of the C40 group.
Kandhari was attending the summit as India’s representative in the youth delegation. She was one of many young activists from over 30 countries at the event.
“I was pleasantly surprised by the city of Copenhagen and their management: about one third of the streets were biking lanes or pedestrian lanes, more than 50 percent of the population ride their bicycles or walk to work everyday, they have clean energy infrastructure and they segregate their waste into six different categories,” she told The Wire. “A good example of real climate action.”
Leaders from over 90 cities had gathered in Denmark’s capital to discuss ideas and share their knowledge of climate solutions towards a sustainable, inclusive and resilient future.
On the opening day, the mayors’ group announced that they were backing the Global Green New Deal, a bold proposal to fight climate change through a major overhaul of different sectors and by drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is based on the Green New Deal drafted by US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.
Most panels in the summit involved mayors or experts sharing their success stories and the technologies and policies they were using to deal with environmental issues in their cities.
The three days of the summit were accompanied with a climate festival in the city, ‘Live Like Tomorrow’. The public programme involved around 90 events, talks and showcases centred around sustainable climate solutions and climate activism.
Young adults from around the world also got to tell their stories and pitch their ideas during formal and informal panel sessions.
This was a special opportunity for Kandhari. “It was so different, going to another country and having the political leaders from all over the world listen to us, to our issues and concerns. That has been one of our central goals, to get the politicians to listen to us,” she said.
In a moving speech, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, a 22-year old college student and the founder of ‘Fridays for Future’ in Uganda, shared her story: “I am a victim of the climate crisis … The heavy rains and strong winds that washed away our crops and left the land bare, the constant dry spells that left the streams and wells dry – my parents had to sell off our land and livestock to sustain our lives. And when the money was over, it was a question of survival or death.”
“I am lucky that I am still surviving but I will not take this for granted because people are dying everyday. I made a decision to protect the only place I call home: Earth. And so I joined other young people all over the globe to protect our future.”
Also read: ‘We Are Striking to Disrupt the System’: In Conversation with Climate Activist Greta Thunberg
Nakabuye delivered her speech on the third and final day of the summit, which was also a Friday. And like every Friday, thousands of school children and other protestors took to the streets of Copenhagen and marched to the city hall in another ‘Fridays for Future’ demonstration.
“This protest was special also because the members of the summit joined the protest,” said Kandhari, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez … gave a powerful speech; the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen, and others also joined the demonstration.”
Luisa Neubauer, youth representative and co-founder of ‘Fridays for Future’ Germany, said, “National leaders so far have failed to address the climate crisis with the seriousness that it requires, which is odd and sad considering that we have been striking for a year and there is no time to lose.”
But at C40, she said, the leaders “seemed to understand” what was at stake. Could the presence of the substantial youth delegate have been the difference?
Then again, only two representatives from India were present at the summit, Kandhari and Firhad Hakim, the mayor of Kolkata. Kolkata won the C40 award for green mobility for public transport electrification efforts of the city’s government.
Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had been scheduled to participate in the summit but was denied permission to travel from the central government. So he delivered his speech through a video call.
“Everyone learned so much from each other,” Kandhari said. “And if there is no one to listen, we miss a great opportunity.”
The young activists taking charge of both local and global climate movements are visibly more determined. As Nakabuye said, “I can tell you that we are a generation of scared people, but very ambitious ones. United, persistent and very good at action.”
Many of these young activists find great inspiration in Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old climate activist from Sweden. She started the ‘Fridays for Future’ movement just over a year ago by skipping school on a Friday and sitting in front of the Swedish parliament to protest her government’s inaction towards climate change. Her solo protest has since snowballed into an international movement.
“I feel that Greta has kind of opened up a space where people now feel that it is okay to be emotional about [climate change], that it is okay to be angry and to express this anger,” Neubauer said.
Pushp Bajaj recently completed his PhD at the University of California, San Diego.