London : Thousands of activists are expected to participate in a march in New York, London and eight other cities worldwide, including Delhi, to pressure world leaders to take action on global warming, ahead of a major summit on climate change this month, a British daily reported Monday.
Heads of state will Sep 23 will attend a meeting on climate change in New York organised by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. It is being hoped the meeting will provide momentum to efforts to reach a global deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 at a conference in Paris, The Guardian reported.
A hundred thousand people are expected to participate in the New York march alone, which will be the focus of the day’s events, Ricken Patel, executive director of digital campaign group Avaaz, one of the organisers of the ‘People’s Climate March’ scheduled for Sep 21, was quoted as saying.
“We in the movement, activists, have failed up until this point to put up a banner and say if you care about this, now is the time, here is the place, let’s come together, to show politicians the political power that is out there on there. Our goal is to mobilise the largest climate change mobilisation in history and the indications are we’re going to get there.”
Nearly 400,000 people have signed a call on Avaaz’s site, saying they will attend one of the global events, which also include marches in Berlin, Paris, Delhi, Rio and Melbourne.