Feature
March with millions
Sometimes nature needs us to ramp up the volume. Bang the drum. Shout from the rafters. And when millions of us do it together, it gives nature a voice too loud to ignore.
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When nature’s cries for help are falling on deaf ears, it’s time for us to raise the roof
The value of nature runs deep. It helps give us with the food we eat, the water we drink, the medicines we take, even the clean air we breathe. Put simply, without nature quietly doing its thing, we wouldn’t be here.
But increasingly it feels like nature is being treated as a disposable luxury. That our wildlife and wild places will always be here, however badly we look after them. When existing protection for nature is torn down and the scientifically proven calls for new laws are ignored, we get angry.
Strength in numbers
We know we’re not the only ones. Around the world millions of people take to the streets each year to protest for nature - whether it is for a planetwide plan to tackle the climate emergency or to protest the destruction of their local wildlife haven. But whatever the reason, when passionate people unite, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
Taking to the streets
Take COP26 last year. As world leaders gathered at the climate summit in Glasgow, millions of people took to the streets around the world to demand action to fight climate change. The RSPB stood shoulder to shoulder with a hundred thousand of you on the streets of Glasgow, with our drums, whistles and placards. We were there to let the people in power know that they must make sure global temperatures rise no more than 1.5 degrees. We wanted to hammer home that protecting nature is crucial if we’re going to achieve this goal.
Melanie Coath from the RSPB was there at the summit. She has no doubt that the millions of people marching across the globe influenced the discussions and talks going on between different countries inside the negotiating rooms.
She said: “It was incredible to see the huge swell of support and passion for our planet at COP26. The crowd that gathered to march was a truly heartening sight and provides much needed impetus for action to tackle the very urgent task ahead of us - to throw everything we have at addressing the climate emergency.”
The biggest nature summit in a decade
In December, the global biodiversity conference, COP15, will take place in Montreal, Canada. We’ll have a chance to speak up for local and global wildlife and the natural world we depend on. The clock is ticking, but together, we can call time on biodiversity loss. Find out more here.