In August, YFoEE and Bundjugend (Young Friends of the Earth Germany) organised Camp For Future, a climate camp in the coal-mining region in the west of Germany. This event became a huge gathering of young activists from all Europe, where they participated and ran many workshops and activities related to the social and environmental justice movement. We asked some of them about the global climate strikes, and reflections on their environmental activism.
Why would you encourage people to join the climate strikes?
“Because the climate strikes are one of the things that can have the most impact on the global scale. They are all going to happen at the same time over a period of a few days, and the media will cover them fully. In Kosovo, we are trying to get local youth organizations to join us and try to organize something together in September.
And we are trying to make it as big as possible because there isn’t enough attention for this problem, and if we make it bigger we can get the media to cover it. So, it is important because we get global recognition about the problem and in at the national level in Kosovo, we force the government to speak about it.”
What is climate justice for you?
“I need to talk first about what climate injustice is. Climate injustice means that marginalised groups are affected by the actions of the privileged ones. To have climate justice, the groups that caused these problems must provide for the marginalised groups. It means making every effort to protect them, at every level.”
Endritra Banjska, SCI GAIA Kosovo
Why would you encourage people to join the climate strikes?
“Because we are facing an existential crisis and obviously, if we don’t react to it, we are saying collectively yes to our own extinction and that of other species. We are already driving them towards it. So, this is the last moment that we can react. It is an urgent call.”
Granit Gashi, GAIA Kosovo