Eight youth groups organised a climate rally, “Namma Chennai, Namma Future”, on Besant Nagar beach on Saturday. Over 500 persons, including fishers, youth and children from areas in Ennore, Manali and Tiruvottiyur, participated in the rally.
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In a statement, the organisers said the ecological crisis required social and political solutions. “Climate change is not a special problem requiring special solutions. The same actions that are required to address existing inequalities and environmental problems will take care of climate change,” they said.
The organisers said: “People of Ennore, Manali and Kodungaiyur — a region with south India’s densest concentration of fossil-fuel-based industries — have been fighting pollution from coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, diesel vehicles and methane-spewing garbage for decades before the phrase climate change became fashionable”.
They extended solidarity to various groups, including fishers of Ennore and Pulicat, farmers in Parandur, fence line communities around the Kudankulam nuclear complex, people fighting various land-degrading expressways and urban poor that are resisting State attempts to evict them in the name of wetland conservation or infrastructure development, according to the statement.