Hundreds of students from across the city gathered for a peaceful march organised by Fridays for Future India, against climate change, in Juhu on Friday.
The worldwide march, an initiative by 16-year-old Swedish school girl and environmentalist Greta Thunberg, is a Friday school strike to garner attention from political leaders called for the largest peaceful protest across 110 countries and over 1,400 cities.
The hour-long event featured a talk by the guest speaker, Advocate Girish Raut, on the changing face of the earth and environment.
“This march is a cry of frustration from the younger generation,” Mrudula Joshi, an organiser and volunteer at Fridays for Future, said. “We may not know much about policy making, but we sure do know that we’re doing something wrong right now,” she added.
Ms. Joshi emphasised on how the strike was held to highlight one of the biggest issues that the planet is facing right now. “We hope that the government takes policy actions, whatever that has to be done, to give us the future we deserve,” she said.
The walk saw college students from not just Mumbai, but from all over the country who registered themselves on a Facebook event on their social media page. “We saw Greta conducting these protests in her country, but then we saw it picking up in other nations as well. So we decided to put together one for Mumbai, and social media got us together,” Ms. Mrudula said.
Aryan Batra, a first-year law student from Amity Kolkata decided to join the march with hopes to make a change. “I think people need to be aware of the climate change that is taking place now. We’re so involved with our lives that we usually ignore this topic altogether. Improvement of lifestyle is necessary, but at the same time, that is degrading the earth,” he said. “As the youth, and the next generation, we should make it a point to stop using plastic and start using the public transport for starters,” he added.
Another class twelve student from Bhandup, Vibhavari Patankar also expressed displeasure about the rising temperature, “We must plant trees in plenty. That is the only way out,” she mentioned.
The silent march proceeded via Juhu Tara Road till its culminating point at the Chowpatty on Birla Road, where Mr. Girish Raut addressed the young crowd about the dangers of climate change. “If not treated with care, this generation will be the last generation to survive on the earth,” he said.
Mr. Raut mentioned that if industrialisation and urbanisation are not monitored immediately, the human race is most likely to be wiped out in the next 50 years. The advocate also went on to read out UN reports from 2014 which stated that the dangerous future for the climate is here. “The temperature keeps increasing at 2 degrees every year; it is very important to keep that in control,” he explained.