Belfast Climate Activists Kick-start 2023 With a Week of Protest
Flavia Gouveia
Climate activists came together this week for a week of demonstrations outside Belfast City Hall to call for 2023 to be a year of climate action. The week of activism culminated in one final demonstration on Friday, 6 January, which saw politicians from Alliance and SDLP in attendance.
Against a backdrop of continued political instability in Northern Ireland, activists from a variety of local organisations, including Friday’s for Future NI, Greenpeace and Ulster Wildlife, signalled their determination to continue to call for climate action for the coming year.
Georgia (19) is a climate activist with Fridays for Future Northern Ireland and Youth Climate Association in Ireland was at the last day of the protest on Friday, 6 January. Speaking about the week of protest she said “We've been protesting every day to make it so that we can't really be ignored anymore. We want to start up the momentum for this year for climate action”.
One notable absence from the early days of the protests was engagement from local politicians. Reflecting on this Georgia said, “it makes me angry, like, because this is their responsibility. And it seems this is not a priority for them”.
She added, “it’s not even that climate denial is the problem anymore. It's climate delay. They can't deny that climate change exists, but what they can do is delay action for another 30 years … and that's just too far off. The climate crisis is now.”
Thinking about the year ahead, Georgia reflected on what would be key priorities and said, “we need to make a transition to renewable energy. We can't keep burning fossil fuels, we can't keep drilling for fossil fuels.”
“We have to make that transition with like workers in mind, it has to be a just transition, with climate justice at the centre. We can’t just shut down coal plants without any regard for the workers, it has to be fair. I think that's a big priority. And also community climate action, and giving citizens more of a say in these matters.”
Georgia urged young people ”to join us because these protests are how we show that people care about this issue. And if we show that we care, it's the first step to action”.
Chair of Alliance Youth, Luke Patterson (20), was also present for the final day of protests. Reflecting on the week of action he said, “it's been great to see people out all week to really start 2023 as we mean to go on. The climate crisis is real and it is something that affects us all. It’s great that we are here starting this year with action like we mean to go on for the rest of the year to hopefully get some meaningful change.”
Speaking about priorities for 2023, Luke reflected on the impact of the continued political instability and said “last year was restricted, in that we managed to get a Climate Change Act passed, but it hasn't been put into force. So that is one of the priorities but obviously, there's an issue there, because we do not have an executive and assembly”.
“We have a huge issue with biodiversity loss in Northern Ireland. So that's another thing that I'm very passionate about. And we also need to form an Environmental Protection Agency, because we need an oversight body to ensure that we do help biodiversity loss and not the afforestation programmes, things like that are put in the action”.
Cathal (15) was also at the protest, striking from school and said “I'm here because I’m seeing all these bad news stories about the climate and the environment, and something just needs to be done”. Cathal urged others “to get out there, get informed and get active in the climate movement”.
To those concerned about the climate movement Luke said “you're not alone. If you care about climate change, please come out and join us. No matter your age, You're not too young. Whether you're nine or if you're 90. This is an issue that affects us and future generations and we need to work together to fight to save it.”
Flavia Gouveia is The Scoop’s Science and Environment editor and is studying Journalism at Ulster University.