When Travel Stopped, These Sustainable Travel Agencies Pivoted

March 19, 2021

COVID-19 has disrupted virtually all facets of what used to be considered “normal.” Over a year into the pandemic, millions cannot safely work in person, children face difficulties with online education and governments struggle to develop and administer vaccines.

An empty check-in area at Gatwick Airport near London. Mark Hodson Photos. CC BY 2.0.

One area significantly impacted by COVID-19 is the sustainable travel industry. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, air travel dropped by 60% in 2020 compared to 2019, with a $370 billion year-on-year loss worldwide.

But a broad array of sustainable and social action travel agencies, organizations which uplift the communities they bring groups of travelers to, have worked tirelessly to continue bolstering at-risk communities while weathering the many challenges of the pandemic.

Pivoting for a World Without Travel

As COVID-19 began to spread and governments imposed lockdown measures, travel agencies focused on sustainability and social action had to work quickly to pivot toward operating in an environment where travel was impossible.

“At first it was a ‘wait-and-see’ thing because it was uncertain how long it was going to last or how widespread it would be,” said Lindsay Booth, CEO of Off Season Adventures, an agency providing an immersive experience to empower travelers and destinations. “We were lucky we didn’t have anyone traveling when everything shut down … But obviously, everything got worse, so we touched base with our partners to make sure they were safe and see what their current situation was like. And then we talked to our travelers about postponing their trips.”

While some agencies initially canceled trips on a week-by-week basis, others, like G Adventures, a leading agency for small-group adventure travel, canceled or postponed all travel through the end of April 2020 without hesitation.

“We made the decision mid-March that we’re canceling until the end of April [because] there’s no reason to keep these tours if we don’t know,” said Casandra Rotunno, a consumer marketing specialist at G Adventures. “From there we kept it going on a monthly basis of canceling tours.”

Catarina Rivera, co-founder of ExplorEquity, an agency supporting local communities and connecting travelers to social justice issues, explained how shortly after the onset of the pandemic, her agency shifted its focus to creating virtual spaces for travelers to connect and talk about the recent loss of the ability to travel.

“We hosted [a series called] ‘Travel Lovers Happy Hour,’ where we invited people to come and share together,” Rivera said. “We invited a mental health expert to give tips at each one for how [travelers] could process what was going on and how they could approach planning for the future. [The expert] would respond directly to the sentiments people were sharing.”

Rivera also noted that ExplorEquity held a panel with the company’s partners in Brazil and Honduras, two countries where trips were canceled, to talk about how the countries were dealing with the uncertainty of the pandemic and how their travel partners’ communities were doing.

ExplorEquity was not the only agency to shift to completely virtual offerings. Beginning in April 2020, G Adventures launched virtual tours hosted by guides around the globe in countries like Italy, Costa Rica, Thailand and Japan.

“[The tours are] an hour on Zoom hosted by one of our [guides] and they remake a complete tour through Zoom and Google Earth and they include their own photos, they give you a welcome meeting and they hit all of the stops on the way—they condense this seven- to 10-day trip within an hour,” Rotunno explained. “And it's great because it allows our [guides] to work while they aren’t able to work within their country.”

Occasional Opportunities for Travel

Bus passengers in South Africa being screened before boarding. GovernmentZA. CC BY-ND 2.0.

As the pandemic continued into the summer, the spread of COVID-19 was uneven. While the United States maintained high case numbers, Europe saw significant declines, presenting opportunities for limited travel on the continent.

James Willcox, co-founder of Untamed Borders, a United Kingdom-based agency partnering with local communities in inaccessible parts of the world, explained how after the U.K. began permitting limited international travel without a mandatory quarantine, the agency was able to look into regions it had previously worked with to offer some in-person travel.

“There was a time where the U.K. had this list of countries where you didn’t have to quarantine upon return, and Turkey was one such country, and we [already] work in Syria, Iran and in Kurdish regions, so we [discussed] putting on a trip to Turkey in September,” Willcox said. “There’s a couple of areas which are stable where the [government] has some travel warnings against. Not that that’s what we look for, but [Turkey] looks like somewhere we could add value to and ensure people have a good experience where they can travel safely.”

Adventures also hosted several in-person experiences beginning in the summer when able to do so safely. The agency implemented new rebooking and cancellation policies to allow for greater flexibility given the pandemic’s uncertainty.

“We took our time in deciding to move forward with that,” Rotunno said, “and in the summer and fall Europe was able to travel within Europe. We had sailing trips for Europeans [with] everyone wearing masks, there’s extreme sanitation, the groups are smaller than usual, and it's all private transport as well. And then Costa Rica started to open up to travelers, then Tanzania and Egypt. So now it's dependent on if travelers are able to go.”

Focusing on Social Consciousness When It's Needed Most

Black Lives Matter demonstrators in London. Livvy Adjei. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

At the core of each of these agencies is a mission rooted in sustainability and social action. While COVID-19 has for the most part disrupted the in-person travel component of these agencies, they have continued to uplift and support the communities they work with.

“There’s something [Untamed Borders is] trying to push at the moment which is that travel has always been a privilege, and in these days you should kind of be appreciative and have some thought about it … consider where you’re going, consider what the impact is and the benefits are,” Willcox said.

Untamed Borders has followed suit through a number of projects it has been able to hold throughout the pandemic. In Afghanistan, the agency helped to organize the Marathon of Afghanistan, and started a tree-planting initiative to help combat deforestation.

ExplorEquity continues to engage with its travelers and the communities it supports through a shift in the online content produced. Rivera discussed how the agency’s social media platforms have been used to shed light on issues including racism in travel, climate change, equity issues for Indigenous communities and decolonization.

“Instead of talking on Instagram and Facebook about our upcoming trips, we’ve been talking about equity issues and highlighting different themes,” Rivera explained. “We’ve seen a lot of engagement and a lot of learning. People who are connected to us on social media have been commenting and sharing the content, and I think they’ve been enthusiastic about being exposed to new concepts or things they weren’t aware of. Even though we can’t travel the way we used to, I still think it's important to create better travelers.”

Promoting social consciousness within the travel community is not limited to sustainable travel agencies. Planeterra, a community tourism nonprofit seeking to reduce global poverty, has worked throughout the pandemic to support many of the same communities the sustainable travel industry works with.

“We looked at what our partners needed and what they’ve been requesting, what support they need that we would normally give in person,” said Rhea Simms, a program manager at Planeterra. “We built an online learning hub … for no budget. Our team compiled a hundred years of [combined] experience on what are the key opportunities, challenges and instructions we bring a community through when we launch and start a tour.”

Simms discussed how these virtual webinars and trainings have served as a way to work directly with partners around the globe, and noted how the pandemic has given the organization the opportunity to reevaluate its approach to volunteers.

“Planeterra’s never had the time or the right projects for volunteers to work with our partners, but having the time now, we’ve got volunteers working with us all around the world,” Simms said. “One just finished designing an e-cookbook for our partner in Jordan … We’re just completing a project with the Canadian High Commission in Sri Lanka, where we got funding from a partner we have there … It's a handicraft shop where over a hundred women from various backgrounds create beautiful handmade goods … and we’re finishing a project in Peru … doing some technical training with communities hoping to launch a tourism program in the coming years.”

Planeterra and G Adventures had been partners before the pandemic, a relationship made stronger as the two have collaborated on recent initiatives. Rotunno said G Adventures worked with Planeterra to raise over $100,000 at the beginning of the pandemic to fund some projects which were impacted by the inability to travel abroad.

“This time has allowed us to reflect on what works best, what has created the most impact … and begin to create the strategy of how we scale this and do it bigger, with the right people, with different organizations,” Simms explained. “This is a huge opportunity for us to facilitate this space for socially minded community enterprises that are trying to empower women or break down barriers for at-risk youth or celebrate Indigenous culture.”

Looking Toward a Post-Pandemic World

The sun setting in Samara, Costa Rica. John. CC BY-SA 2.0.

While there is no concrete timeline for the formal end of the pandemic and the beginning of a “new normal,” the distribution of 10 different vaccines worldwide as of March 17 signals the pandemic’s end will eventually become a reality. As countries receive and distribute COVID-19 vaccines to their citizens, international travel is expected to return.

But just because travel will be possible does not mean it will look the same as it did in the pre-COVID era. ExplorEquity ceased all group travel throughout the pandemic, a change made permanent going forward.

“We are shifting entirely away from group travel, so we’re not going to be offering those kinds of trips anymore,” Rivera said, noting the agency would be pivoting to an online store in March 2021. “What we’re going to be offering is [locally made] products as well as virtual experiences … The two experiences we’re starting with are both live, so you can still have the magic of a travel moment, creating a memory in a community with other people, through these experiences in a different way. And the benefit is that local communities can still earn income from this type of experience without receiving travelers in person.”

Other agencies are working to schedule prospective trips in 2021 and beyond, anticipating possible delays in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Off Season Adventures has begun planning new trips, taking into account the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s guidelines and safety measures from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We have people planning to travel in June of this year, and we’re still keeping that open because we’re really still not sure what’s going to happen,” Booth said. “They’re planning to go to Tunisia. Tunisia has been closed to Americans for most of this, so we’ll just have to see.”

Given how far in advance most of its offerings need to be planned, Off Season Adventures is also working on coordinating with travelers who reach out to them to plan trips to Asia and Africa in 2022 and 2023.

Every agency interviewed expressed optimism for the future. While travel has been a temporary casualty of COVID-19, it has also brought folks together around the issues of sustainability, social consciousness and justice. The unique ways in which every agency pivoted to continue serving communities around the world show how versatile this industry is, and how vital the cause of uplifting marginalized communities remains today.

The State of Travel Post-Coronavirus

February 3, 2021

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues around the world, the hope that a vaccine will bring an end to the ongoing crisis comes with optimism that the road to economic recovery is near. Yet, economic recovery will likely be a slow burn, and travel is no exception.

Travel is one of the hardest-hit industries by the pandemic as border closures and trip cancellations equate to empty airports and travel destinations. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism is the third-largest export category in the world, accounting for 7% of global trade. For some countries, tourism is the main driver of economic activity, accounting for a high proportion of the national gross domestic product. The British Virgin Islands is the place most reliant on tourism in the world, with travel and tourism accounting for 92% of GDP in 2018. Among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, travel is still a major contributor to national GDP. Spain relies the most on tourism among OECD countries, accounting for almost 12% of total GDP in 2018.

“The COVID-19 pandemic will only worsen conditions for those in the travel industry”

2020 was a disastrous year for the travel industry, which reported record losses as the coronavirus spread around the world. According to a December 2020 UNWTO report, last year saw a 72% decrease in international tourist arrivals from January to October, representing a loss of 900 million international tourist arrivals compared to the same time in 2019. The Asia-Pacific region, the first to report coronavirus infections, was the hardest hit with an 82% decrease in international arrivals. According to the same report, the decline in international tourism could result in a loss of $2 trillion in global GDP, or 2% of the world total.

The pandemic’s toll on the travel industry goes beyond just loss to revenue and profit. Behind the numbers lies the human cost of COVID-19, one that will potentially disrupt the livelihoods of millions of people around the world who were already facing marginalization before 2020. As with other inequalities, such as growing income disparity, the COVID-19 pandemic will only worsen conditions for those in the travel industry who are already being left behind in the global economy. The UNWTO estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic puts over 100 million jobs in the tourism industry at risk. Women make up the majority of the industry’s workforce, so do many children who are not accounted for in the formal economy. This means that women and children are the ones bearing the most losses from the coronavirus’s effect on the travel industry, potentially worsening preexisting gender and economic disparities in the tourism industry’s workforce.

The path to economic recovery is a long road ahead, but one that is foreseeable with the rollout of several coronavirus vaccines worldwide. Some positive estimates show that travel and tourism revenue can rebound to 85% of 2019 revenue by the end of 2021, and return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. However, some sectors of the travel industry will likely recover before others, with domestic travel expected to recover faster than international travel. Countries that rely more on international air travel, both inbound and outbound, are likely to have slower recoveries compared to countries where domestic travel is higher.

The full brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic on the travel industry is still being felt across the world. The post-pandemic reality of travel is not entirely known. Yet, even with the potential for recovery, the pandemic is going to change the state of travel for years to come. With it, travelers may have to wait longer than expected for a full return to normal next time they get feelings of wanderlust.

Fossil Fuel Industry sees the Future in Hard-to-Recycle Plastic

October 20, 2019

Plastic pollution and the climate crisis are two inseparable parts of the same problem, though they aren’t treated as such. Many countries have implemented plastic bag charges and plastic straw bans while action to phase out fossil fuels lags far behind, due in part to the inertia of the huge oil and gas companies that dominate the sector.

An investigation by The Guardian recently found that just 20 of these firms are responsible for 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1965. How will they adapt as fossil fuel demand wanes with the rise of renewable energy and battery power? The answer is plastic – and that shift is already well underway.

Most of the plastic that exists today has been made in the last decade. The environment appears to be drowning in plastic for the same reason that global temperatures continue to rise – fossil fuels have remained cheap and abundant.

From filling up cars to plastic toy cars. Steinar Engeland/Unsplash, CC BY

Cheap plastic is made using chemicals produced in the process of making fuel. Petroleum refining transforms crude oil extracted from the ground into gasoline, producing ethane as a byproduct. A decade ago, the advent of fracking – hydraulic fracturing of oil or natural gas – made the raw materials for plastics significantly cheaper.

Fracking shale gas produces lots of ethane, which is turned into ethylene – the building block for many hard-to-recycle plastic products, like packaging films, sachets and bottles. Cheap polyethylene from fracking created a glut of plastic packaging on supermarket shelves that sociologist Rebecca Altman has called “frackaging”.

There are few facilities worldwide that can dispose of or recycle this kind of plastic efficiently. They’re expensive to set up and run and there’s little demand for using the recycled material to make new products. While packaging is the single largest source of plastic demand, most of that is thrown away as soon as it’s removed, with one third of it estimated to go directly to domestic waste and either incineration or landfill. In much of the world, a lot of it goes directly into the environment.

Reducing fuel consumption won’t necessarily solve the plastic problem. Global plastic production is expected to double in the next 15 years even as demand for gasoline wanes. In 2017, 50% of all crude oil produced worldwide was refined into fuel for transport, most as gasoline. Electric vehicles and more efficient forms of public transport mean gasoline demand is falling. The oil and gas companies who own these refineries are instead gearing up to turn what is now excess fuel into plastics for packaging.

Climate change in a bottle

As demand for gasoline continues to decline in future, more plastics will be made directly from crude oil. Petroleum companies now plan to convert up to 40% of the crude oil they intend to extract into petrochemicals. These are chemicals like acetylene, benzene, ethane, ethylene, methane, propane, and hydrogen, which form the basis for thousands of other products, including plastics.

The industry predicts petrochemicals will grow from 16% of oil demand in 2020 to 20% by 2040 largely to supply the feedstocks for making plastics. The environmental consequences of making even more plastic from crude oil will be significant. More plastic pollution will enter watercourses and the ocean, while amping up production will accelerate global emissions.

That’s because making plastic releases carbon dioxide (CO₂). Both transporting the crude oil to make it and then disposing of the plastic by incineration generates emissions. Most of the estimated total natural capital cost of plastic pollution – USD$75 billion per year for the consumer goods sector alone – arises from CO₂ emissions linked to producing and transporting plastic.

Expanding plastic production and sending more plastic either directly to incineration or to waste-to-energy facilities - where plastics are turned into oil and used to generate electricity or heat – mean CO₂ emissions from plastic are expected to triple by 2050 to 309m metric tonnes. Incinerating mountains of plastic waste could become one of the largest sources of C0₂ emissions in Europe’s energy sector as fossil fuels are phased out.

Annual plastic production and use currently emits as much CO₂ each year as 189 500 megawatt coal power plants. CIEL, Author provided

Halving the use of petroleum-based plastic packaging by 2030 and phasing it out altogether by 2050 could ensure CO₂ emissions targets are still met. Achieving net zero emissions from incinerating plastic packaging means eliminating all non-essential uses of petroleum-based plastic by 2035, following a peak in packaging and other single use, disposable plastics in 2025. Replacing traditional plastics with new materials made from renewable sources like corn starch could help, as could developing a new infrastructure for industrial plastic composting.

In a climate crisis, plastic waste doesn’t look like the world’s most pressing environmental problem. But considering plastic and climate as two separate issues is a mistake. Concern about plastic pollution isn’t distracting people from a more serious problem – plastic is the problem. If we see plastics as “solid climate change”, they become central to the climate crisis.

DEIRDRE MCKAY is a Reader in Geography and Environmental Politics at Keele University.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

A Rohingya refugee girl sells vegetables in Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh. Access to education is extremely limited in the camps, and most children — particularly girls — receive little to no formal education, Aug. 28, 2018. AP Photo/Altaf Qadri

Without School, A ‘Lost Generation’ of Rohingya Refugee Children Face Uncertain Future

August 8, 2019

The boy’s eyes lit up when he talked about his dream of becoming a doctor.

Seven-year-old “Mohammad” – not his real name – is a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar. I met him at a learning center at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in early July 2019.

After sharing his aspirations, Mohammed quickly remembered reality.

“I know my dreams will never come true,” he said with a faint smile.

Refugee crisis of global proportions

Mohammed is among the more than 700,000 Rohingya who have taken refuge in Bangladesh after an ethnic cleansing campaign of rape, killing and torture by the Myanmar military in mid-2017. They joined the more than 200,000 Rohingyas who had previously fled Myanmar’s brutal efforts to rid the Buddhist-majority country of this marginalized Muslim minority.

Of the newly arrived Rohingya, three-quarters are women and children, according to the United Nations.

In a noteworthy humanitarian gesture, the Bangladeshi government has given refuge to these persecuted people. Aided by Bangladeshi community organizations, various UN agencies and other international donors, the Rohingya have been receiving shelter, food, clothes and basic health care since the massive exodus in 2017.

This essential care, which cost an estimated US$920.5 million in 2019 represents a gargantuan global effort. Still, the resources are woefully inadequate.

Most Bangladeshi refugee camps are overcrowded and, as a result, unhygienic. Residents survive on the absolute bare minimum of nutrition and other necessities. Monsoon rain, cold and landslides are everyday threats for these Rohingya, as I’ve witnessed firsthand during my visits to Bangladeshi camps in 2017 and 2019.

It is a dismal existence for all. But it is the plight of the roughly 500,000 Rohingya children living in limbo that strikes me as bleakest.

Concerns of a lost generation

Research shows that future of refugee children grows more imperiled the longer they remain out of school.

In many countries that host substantial refugee populations, including Turkey, Lebanon and Uganda, the United Nation’s refugee agency and the United Nations Children’s Fund ensure children receive a quality, full-time education, either at the camps or in nearby public schools.

Even so, just 23% refugee children worldwide are enrolled in secondary school, according to the UN’s High Commission on Human Rights. Just 1% attend university.

Because Bangladeshi authorities have not granted the Rohingya official refugee status and consider them instead “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals,” the roughly 500,000 Rohingya children in the country have no access to a formal education. Rohingya children are not permitted to attend Bangladeshi public schools.

The United Nations Children’s Fund and its partners offer Rohingya refugees aged 4 to 14 two-hour daily lessons on Burmese, English, math and life skills at about 1,600 learning centers located at the camps. These classes keep about 145,000 Rohingya children – or about 30% of the Rohingya youngsters in Bangladesh – occupied for part of the day but do not provide the kind of formal education that will allow the children to work toward a high school degree and enter the job market.

The camps offer no schooling at all for Rohingya refugee adolescents aged 15 to 18.

English-language exercise books at a UNICEF-supported ‘learning center’ at one of the Kutupalong refugee camps in Bangladesh. Rubayat Jesmin, Author provided

Some teenagers, mostly boys, have turned to madrassas, or Islamic learning centers, where they can receive a religious education.

The remaining Rohingya children who attend neither UNICEF classes nor madrassas are simply left to fill their own day. At the Rohingya camps, I saw boys working in shops, playing cards or sitting idle at all hours of the day.

When I asked Mohammad what he does when he is not in school, he told me that he “takes care of his family.”

“I play with the other kids, too,” he added with a grin.

Adolescent girls, I learned, are often kept at home by their parents because of the Rohingya’s conservative social and religious norms.

The camps can also be dangerous for girls. Human traffickers have been known to target young Rohingya women, promising them jobs outside the camps. Girls face other forms of violence and human rights abuse at Bangladesh’s camps, too, including child marriage.

Bangladeshi camps for the Rogingyas are typically overcrowded, unhygienic, muddy and prone to landslides. Rubayat Jesmin, Author provided

Rohingya repatriation

Growing up in unstable conditions, with no possibility of study, Rohingya children like Mohammed are at risk of becoming a lost generation.

Their limbo may not last forever. In response to heightened international pressure, Myanmar in November 2017 agreed to take the Rohingyas back starting November 2018.

However, their return was postponed due to protests by the refugees, who feared conditions in Myanmar was not yet safe. The United Nations and other international refugee services have also voiced concern about sending the Rohingya back, saying there was no indication that the Myanmar government had punished the people responsible for the crimes in Rahkine state, nor agreed to give the Rohingya citizenship.

Considered foreigners in both Myanmar, their native country, and Bangladesh, where they’ve sought refuge, the Rohingya Muslims are the world’s largest stateless people.

While the negotiations for their repatriation continue, a generation of traumatized Rohingya children wait for their futures to begin.

RUBAYAT JESMIN is a Doctoral Student at the College of Community and Public Affairs, Binghamton University, State University of New York.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

Students Across Europe Protest in Hopes of a Greener Future

February 27, 2019

After years of political gridlock surrounding climate change legislation, students emerge as a force for change.

Photo of a student protester. By Josh Barwick on Unsplash.

Thousands of students across Europe left school on Friday, February 15 to protest the lack of action on climate issues in their countries. In what the New York Times called a “coordinated walk out for action on climate issues,” elementary, middle, high school, and undergraduate students came together to demand a greener future. In London, protestors held signs reading “The ocean is rising and so are we” and “Act now or swim later.”

The student-led movement for climate action that is currently taking Europe by storm began with 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. In September, Thunberg started skipping class to stage sit-ins at the Swedish parliament, demanding that her government seriously address climate change. Thunberg’s action inspired teens worldwide, some of whom created the global movement Youth Strike 4 Climate and began organizing protests and walkouts, using social media to coordinate efforts. According to the New York Times, demonstrations have been held in Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland, among others.

The New York Times writes that the new organization gained even more energy in October of 2018 when a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change disclosed that the world has only twelve years to change its climate policy before the consequences of inaction such as food shortages, rising sea levels, floods and forest fires manifest themselves.

Thunberg remains a notable voice in the movement she inspired, and went on to speak at the global climate-change conference in Poland last December. “You say you love your children above all else — and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes,” she told politicians at the conference. “Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”

In British schools, protesters received mixed reactions from teachers and staff. While some encouraged students, others threatened to punish them for skipping class. “My school was not supportive at the start. They said I would get detention for unauthorized absence,” Anna Taylor, the seventeen-year-old co-founder of the UK Student Climate Network told the New York Times.

Sixteen-year-old Bonnie Morely, who was attending the strike with friends from school, told the New York Times that a head teacher had taken down posters advertising the strike in her school’s common areas. “They’re treating us like we are doing something really wrong,” Morley said. “The future of our planet is looking really bleak, and all the politicians are asleep at the wheel. We have to wake them up, and I think thousands of kids on the streets will do just that.”

Like the teachers, European politicians displayed mixed reactions, with some supporting the students and others going so far as to suggest that the strikes were the product of a secret governmental organization.

According to the New York Times, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May said that, “everybody wants young people to be engaged in the issues that affect them most so that we can build a brighter future for all of us. But it is important to emphasize that disruption increases teachers’ workloads and wastes lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared for.”

Thunberg tweeted in response: “British PM says that the children on school strike are ‘wasting lesson time.’ That may well be the case, but then again, political leaders have wasted 30 years of inaction. And that is slightly worse.”

“We don’t miss school because we’re lazy or because we don’t want to go to school,” Jakob Blasel, a high school student who assisted with the organization of an earlier protest in Berlin told the Washington Post. “We can’t go to school, because we have to strike. We have to deliver an uncomfortable message to our leaders that it can’t go on this way.”

Youth for climate is currently planning another round of protests and another global youth strike for March 15. The movement is growing and more students from nations across the world are expected to join.

Emma Bruce is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While not writing she explores the nearest museums, reads poetry, and takes classes at her local dance studio. She is passionate about sustainable travel and can't wait to see where life will take her.