Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg said Monday that reporters covering the global efforts to fight climate change should focus on activists from the developing nations most affected by it.
The Associated Press reported that Thunberg made the remarks at a press conference while explaining why she and another activist would turn over their microphones to others at an upcoming United Nations climate summit in Spain.
“It’s really about them,” Thunberg said of activists from nations where climate change’s effects are being felt most severely. “We talk about our future, they talk about their present.”
“It is people especially from the global south, especially from indigenous communities, who need to tell their stories,” she added.
Thunberg’s remarks came as she turned control of the press conference to other demonstrators including Filipino climate change activist Kisha Erah Muaña, who warned that the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was “about lives and survival.”
“We deserve to be listened to and we also deserve to have our lands back,” added Rose Whipple, an activist who organized with Standing Rock protesters in Minnesota against the Keystone pipeline, according to the AP.
Thunberg has become a central figurehead of the global movement to fight climate change since inspiring school strikes in her home country of Sweden and elsewhere around the world, where young activists refuse to attend classes as a means of protesting inaction on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions.
