World leaders must heed calls from the young to act on climate crisis

World leaders must heed calls from the young to act on climate crisis

In September 2019, more than 6m people around the world joined climate protests organised by school and university students, according to the organisers. And these organisers — in most places — were teenagers. It was one of the biggest mass protest events that the world has seen in recent years, and it was organised by kids.

That protest came out of decades of hard work from climate activists. But it also happened because of a new, widespread sense of fear.

To my generation, the climate crisis is all-consuming. A recent global study showed that three-quarters of young people think the future is frightening. More than 45 per cent said their feelings about climate affect their daily lives.

However, for people in countries like mine, Uganda, our anxiety is not about the future. Since I started a solo protest on the streets of Kampala in 2019, Uganda has been hit several times by flash flooding, droughts and even swarms of locusts linked to extreme weather that has been blamed on climate change.

After four years of drought in Madagascar, half a million children are on the verge of acute malnourishment in what the UN is calling a “climate change famine”. Deadly typhoons are affecting my