Scottish students have taken part in a global march on September 24, 2021, seeking urgent action on climate change. Friday for Future Scotland (FFS), a group founded by young people from across Scotland in early 2019, held climate strikes across Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, and Ullapool. Young environmental activist Greta Thunberg leads the wider movement in 700 places worldwide. Schoolchildren marched from Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park to the city’s George Square. On the other hand, several also gathered in Edinburgh outside the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood. The strike took place five weeks before Glasgow’s hosting in the United Nations’ climate change conference called COP26.

“I felt hopeless not doing anything. These school strikes are one thing that definitely bring a lot of people some hope and they are really important,” said a 14-year-old from Glasgow named Leah Duffy who participated in the FFS movement due to anxiety over climate change. Duffy added that this movement just shows the youth’s willingness to “sacrifice their own education in order to get this message across.” After a series of one-day protests, 17-year-old Sandy Boyd, one of the protest’s organizers from Trinity Academy called young people across Scotland to strike for a week during COP26, from November 1 to November 5, 2021. Meanwhile, the government of Scotland says its goal to reduce emissions is one of the toughest in the world, with a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by the year 2045.