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Earth Strike! Demanding action to protect our planet

Join Health Poverty Action in supporting the Earth Strike on the 20th September 2019

At Health Poverty Action, we are proud to be joining activists, organisations and social movements on the 20th September for the Earth Strike – a day of global action demanding that governments around the world act now to protect our planet.

In solidarity with the UK Student Climate Network – one of the organisations leading this strike in the UK – we have also signed on to this statement outlining our demands.

This is a crucial time for our planet – temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising and the occurrence of so called ‘natural disasters’ are on the up. What’s worse, communities and indigenous groups in the Global South are finding themselves on the front-line of this crisis while the real culprits – our unsustainable and never-ending pursuit of growth, and the unchecked power of corporations – continue business as usual. Communities all across the world, like those we work with in Chimanimani Zimbabwe who had their homes destroyed by cyclone Idai earlier this year, are paying the price for a crisis they did not create.

But it doesn’t need to be this way! The solutions we have seen emanating from countries like the UK offer too-little-too-late responses that bear no resemblance to the scale of the problem. There has been talk of reducing rather than stopping emissions, and many have promoted renewable technologies as a solution. However, this doesn’t acknowledge that these solutions still rely on the extraction of natural resources, and big emitters like the UK still fail to take responsibility for their share of the crisis. It’s time we demanded more.

On 20th September, we come together to stand in solidarity with all those around the world demanding access to clean air, water and land; demanding the elimination of emissions; demanding a fair transition to a sustainable world; and demanding that those most affected have a seat at the decision-making table.

The climate crisis is a human-made crisis – it’s time we put an end to it.

At Health Poverty Action, we believe that to put an end to issues of poverty and inequality – such as the climate crisis – we need to address what causes them in the first place. Join our movement for change to address the root causes of poverty and poor health.