What is Extinction Rebellion (UPSC)? : Delhi Police have named environmental activists Disha Ravi, Nikita Jacob, and Shantanu Muluk, who are volunteers of a global environment movement seeking to call attention to the climate change emergency, in the Greta Thunberg ‘toolkit’ case.
Analysis
- The global movement Extinction Rebellion (UPSC) , also referred to as ‘XR’, describes itself as a “decentralized, international and politically non-partisan movement using non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency”.
- Extinction Rebellion was launched in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2018, as a response to a report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which declared that “we only have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change and our understanding that we have entered the 6th mass extinction event”.
- The movement now has a presence in 75 countries, including India.
What does Extinction Rebellion want?
- The group has “three core demands” of governments around the world. It wants governments to “Tell the Truth”, to “Act Now”, and to “Go Beyond Politics” in order to confront the climate and ecological emergency that the world is faced with.
- It wants them to communicate the urgency to bring change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.
And what are XR’s links to and activities in India?
- The movement claims to have been inspired by 15 major civil disobedience movements around the world, including, apart from Women’s Suffrage and the Arab Spring, India’s struggle for Independence. It refers to Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930.
- Apart from lending support to global events on climate change, the Indian chapter of XR has also been vocal about local issues including the ongoing protests by farmers at the gates of Delhi, the Save Mollem campaign against three major infrastructure projects in a forest in Goa, coal sustainability, and the conservation of the Western Ghats.