Climate action in Rojava

This article was published by the Institute for Social Ecology, May, 2019

“To defend nature, we must organize” – Greetings from Rojava to the climate movement!

An action took place in the city of Qamislo in Rojava as part of the global action day of the climate movement, “FridaysForFuture.” Together with the city administration of Qamislo, internationalists from Make Rojava Green Again demonstrated with students of the Rojava University  and cleaned up the city.

With banners, and shouting slogans, more than 50 students of the Rojava University in Qamislo walked through the city and drew attention to the ecological difficulties, from waste in the city to the global climate crisis. With this demonstration, the activists took part in the global climate movement FridaysForFuture, which had called for a worldwide action day on Friday. Beside the students and activists of the city administration,  internationalists of the campaign Make Rojava Green Again also took part. The banners carried by the students said: “To defend nature we have to organize ourselves – system change not climate change”, signed with FridaysForFuture-Rojava.

The slogan brings it to the point: only in a self-organised society, which is able to determine their future outside the logic of capitalist production and its inner need to produce and to consume more, there will be no solution to the ecological crises we are facing today. Only in a society that lives on the values of solidarity, with a holistic understanding about the world, can a future be build.

At the demonstration in Qamislo, Mahir Pir, a history student at Rojava University, emphasized that the way we deal with nature and the cleanliness of cities also reflects the mentality of a society. Cleanliness in daily life, cities, homes and the preservation and defense of nature, are among the essential things in life.

The students underlined the importance of leading this action as the youth, because the strength of society lies with the youth. Especially nowadays, in the global movement for a radical change of the economical and political system, we can see the importance of this. In the front line of every Friday demonstration, the youth are marching, calming a future worth living in.

And as in the defense of the revolution in Rojava and the Democratic Federation of North East Syria, the building of the democratic system, and in an ecological society, the revolutionary youth play a significant role.

With the action in Rojava on the second global day of action of the climate movement, the activists also sent their warmest and revolutionary greetings to the people on the streets of the world, wished them every success in struggle for a democratic modernity, in harmony with nature.

A video of the action can be found here: