Support for young climate strikers
Support for young climate strikers
Jess Price, Conservation Officer
Millions of children and students around the world have been striking on Fridays to demand that world leaders take serious action to address our environmental crisis. They are now calling on people of all ages to join them in a Global Climate Strike this Friday 20 September, reminding us all that our house is on fire, and we must act like it.
Our natural world is in a critical condition. Britain is now ranked as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, yet we continue to lose our most precious remnants of wild natural space and vast numbers of our insects and birds. The Government declared a Climate Emergency in May 2019 but our existing laws are still too weak and the ecological crisis we face is not being taken seriously enough. These are not isolated issues and their solutions mustn’t be either: we need to restore our reedbeds, kelp forests, meadows and woodlands so that they can lock away carbon and reduce the impacts of climate change, while giving wildlife the space it needs to recover and thrive.
For these reasons, we fully support the youth movement and people across Sussex who feel compelled to demonstrate their concerns. The Wildlife Trusts across the UK stand united with all those who share our belief that nature is valuable in its own right as well as being essential to our existence.
Since the Sussex Wildlife Trust is working every day to help tackle this climate and ecological emergency, our staff will not be actively striking. On 20 September and every day that it is required we will continue:
- Calling for an ecological network for nature’s recovery in law through our Wilder Future campaign
- Re-connecting people with nature so that they can appreciate how vital a healthy natural world is to everyone’s wellbeing
- Protecting our most special wild places - future biodiversity can only adapt and evolve from the biodiversity that survives today
- Fighting unsustainable and destructive proposals for new roads for carbon-hungry cars or bigger airports across ancient woodland
- Reducing the impacts of flooding and drought through our Natural Flood Management partnership projects
- Creating a Wilder Sussex
It’s time to accelerate action on the climate crisis, including through restoring our natural world, and we will continue to play our part in this powerful movement for change. Please join us - you’ll find a range of positive and practical ways you can contribute to our planet’s future here.