Indians rally against climate change ahead of UN talks
Hundreds of demonstrators rallied in New Delhi on Saturday, calling on the Indian government and world leaders to take urgent steps against climate change at a high-stakes UN summit next week.
Carrying placards that read "I want to save forests" and "Coal kills", around 300 protesters shouted slogans and danced to pounding drum beats.
The protest came a day ahead of a massive rally planned Sunday in New York called the "People's Climate March", with some 2,000 other marches planned around the world, including in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Melbourne.
Organisers are seeking to put pressure on world leaders meeting at a United Nations summit in New York on Tuesday aimed at injecting momentum into struggling efforts to tackle global warming.
US President Barack Obama is to outline his vision for limiting global warming at the meeting, the first of its kind since the Copenhagen summit collapsed in disarray in 2009.
But key polluters China and India are sending lower-level representatives in a move seen as reducing the summit's authority.
Some of the demonstrators in the Indian capital on Saturday sported tiger costumes to underline declining tiger numbers across the subcontinent.
Other protesters sported blue, black and yellow T-shirts and carried matching umbrellas.
The blue stood for water, black for coal and yellow for energy, organisers explained.
Experts warn that climate change could spark shorter, heavier monsoons in India, meaning greater flooding, as well as hotter weather in a part of the globe where the mercury already soars.
© 2014 AFP
