Fridays for Future (FFF), also known as the School Strike for Climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet [ˈskûːlstrɛjk fœr klɪˈmɑ̌ːtɛt]), is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy. Publicity and widespread organising began after Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg staged a protest in August 2018 outside of the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, holding a sign that read "Skolstrejk för klimatet" ("School strike for the climate").
A global strike on 15 March 2019 gathered more than one million strikers in 2,200 strikes organised in 125 countries. On 24 May 2019, in the second global strike, 1,600 protests across 150 countries drew hundreds of thousands of strikers. The May protests were timed to coincide with the 2019 European Parliament election.
The 2019 Global Week for Future was a series of 4,500 strikes across over 150 countries, focused around Friday 20 September and Friday 27 September. Likely the largest climate strikes in world history, the 20 September strikes gathered roughly 4 million protesters, many of them schoolchildren, including 1.4 million in Germany. On 27 September, an estimated two million people participated in demonstrations worldwide, including over one million protesters in Italy and several hundred thousand protesters in Canada.
Earlier school climate strikes
In November 2006, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition was formed to organise climate change actions involving youth and school children. In 2010, in England there were school walkouts over climate change, linked to a Climate Camp. In late-November 2015, an independent group of students invited other students around the world to skip school on the first day of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. On 30 November, the first day of the conference, a "Climate strike" was organised in over 100 countries; over 50,000 people participated. The movement focused on three demands: 100% clean energy; keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and helping climate refugees.
Greta Thunberg and beginnings, 2018
On 20 August 2018, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, then in ninth grade, decided to not attend school until the 2018 Sweden general election on 9 September after heat waves and wildfires in Sweden. She has said she was inspired by the teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who organised the March for Our Lives. Thunberg protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day during school hours with a sign that read "Skolstrejk för klimatet" ("school strike for the climate"). Among her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions per the Paris Agreement. On 7 September, just before the general elections, she announced that she would continue to strike every Friday until Sweden aligns with the Paris Agreement. She coined the slogan Fridays for Future, which gained worldwide attention, and inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.
School strikes for climate began to be organised around the world, inspired by Thunberg. The first strike to number more than one person took place in The Hague in September outside the Dutch parliament, led by Sandor van Gessel, Anne-Laure Stroek, Ianthe Minnaert and Ellis van der Borgh. In the days that followed, in Australia, thousands of students began to strike on Fridays, ignoring Prime Minister Scott Morrison's call for "more learning in schools and less activism". Galvanised by the COP24 Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, strikes continued at least in 270 cities in December in countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In 2019, strikes were organised again in the countries listed above and in other countries, among them Colombia, New Zealand, and Uganda. Mass strikes took place on 17 and 18 January 2019, when at least 45,000 students protested in Switzerland and Germany alone, against insufficient policies on global warming. In several countries, including Germany and the UK, pupils demanded the change of laws to reduce the voting age to 16 so that they could influence public elections in favour of the youth.
In August 2019 Thunberg travelled to New York City on a two-week journey by sailboat to continue calling attention to the work needed to address the climate crisis. She participated in school strikes being planned in the United States on 20 September, and soon after she spoke at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September 2019, in New York City.
In Germany, regional groups were organised, communicating autonomously within WhatsApp groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 155 local groups were counted by the movement.
In United States, organizers coordinated on a state-by-state level and communicated autonomously within Slack groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 134 groups were counted by the movement. The organisations Sunrise Movement, 350.org, OneMillionOfUs, Earth uprising, Future Coalition, Earth Guardians, Zero Hour, and Extinction Rebellion helped to coordinate.
The Belgian environment minister for Flanders, Joke Schauvliege, resigned on 5 February 2019 after falsely claiming the state security agency had evidence that the school strikes in Belgium were a "set‑up".
In the United Kingdom, on 13 February 2019, following open letters in support of the socio-political movement Extinction Rebellion in 2018, 224 academics signed an open letter giving their "full support to the students" attending the School Strike for Climate action. On Friday 15 February, more than 60 actions in towns and cities within the United Kingdom took place, with an estimated 15,000 strikers taking part.
Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, addressed a Fridays for Future climate strike in Potsdam, Germany that same day. On 21 February 2019, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated his intent to spend hundreds of billions of euros on climate-change mitigation, amounting to a fourth of the EU budget. He announced this in a speech next to Greta Thunberg, and media credited the school-strike movement with provoking the announcement.
On 5 March 2019, 700 German-speaking researchers signed a statement in support of the school strikes in that country. Other researchers were invited to support the statement and it has been signed by over 26,800 scientists from mainly Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
On 9 May 2019, during a European Union summit in Sibiu, representatives of the movement from all over Europe met with several national leaders of European countries and handed them an open letter, which was signed by over 16,000 European climate strikers and their supporters.
Global Climate Strike for Future of 15 March 2019