Activists screen videos onto Arctic glaciers in climate protest

The protest was filmed in preparation for an event planned for the UN biodiversity summit in New York Wednesday.

On a remote glacier in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Greenpeace campaigners projected a video showing young climate activists calling on global heads of state to step up and take climate change seriously.

The action, which took place on Friday, the first day school strikes for climate got back underway, featured activists from all over the world, calling on global heads of state to join a “Wake Up Call” — a webinar that will feature their call for climate action and ocean protection, and is scheduled to coincide with the UN biodiversity summit in New York on Wednesday.

This will be the first high level summit on the environment to go ahead after the coronavirus outbreak shelved what would have been a series of landmark summits scheduled for 2020.

The activists are calling on heads of state to join them in a conference to tackle climate change.

[Svalbard glaciers lost their protective buffer in the mid-1980s and have been melting ever since]

Glaciers on Svalbard have been retreating increasingly rapidly, according to institutes that track their movements.

This year saw another glacier in Svalbard clock up the greatest annual loss of ice in the 54 years since records began, according to the Norwegian Polar Institute.

While preparing for the installation the Greenpeace team witnessed a huge chunk of the glacier, around the height of three double decker buses (about 30 meters) fall off the side of the glacier and crash into the sea.

Production by Natalie Thomas.