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Environmentalists and members of non-governmental organisations hold banners during a protest to demand action to combat global warming as experts hold UN climate talks, on Dec. 3, 2011 in Durban.(Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
Several thousand demonstrators turned out in the South African city, Durban, on Sunday near the United Nations annual climate change summit.
The protesters called on world powers attending the meeting to come up with a strong plan to deal with climate change.
“It’s all about our future. It’s calling for a sustainable future. We’ve got to act and we’ve actually got to act urgently, so that we put this planet back onto a sustainable path,” Bishop Jeff Davies, who was among the protesters, told Canadian broadcaster CTV.
Demonstration organizers had called for a Global Day of Protest to pressure world leaders into taking action to mitigate climate change.
The call to action on the organizer’s website includes the “demand that world leaders take the urgent and resolute action that is needed to prevent the catastrophic destabilization of global climate.”
The European Union has said that it wants to meet on a new agreement that would cover all nations, according to the BBC. The proposed deal is backed by some of the poorest nations in the world.
Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s expert on climate change, said nations are meeting on “a second commitment period” for the Kyoto Protocol deal that was approved in the late 1990s and runs out in 2012, according to The Associated Press.
