Extinction Rebellion activists staged a protest next to the gardens of the Royal Palace in Brussels on Saturday calling on the King to declare a climate emergency.
Organisers said that the Belgian government had failed to act on climate and they decided to demand that the King – who traditionally avoids meddling in domestic politics and does not hold legislative power – acknowledges the gravity of the climate crisis and officially declares an environmental state of emergency.
According to police, 600 protestors massed at the Place de Palais in Brussels, heavily secured by police.
Extinction Rebellion rose to prominence when activists brought central London, Britain, to a stand-still in 2018.
This year, protests have spread across the world in tandem with other environmentalist movements such as the Youth4Climate School Strike.
‘Die-ins’ and street parties have sprung up at road blocks from Melbourne, Australia to Berlin, Germany, as thousands have taken to the streets.
“The purpose here is to hold meetings as citizens where we speak about concrete solutions facing the ecological and climatic crisis. And the idea is also to address the king because even if we are aware of the constitutional limits for him, we ask him to go outside these limits and disobey by symbolically declaring a state of emergency for the climate and the environment,” said Sarah, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion in Belgium.
The movement seeks to bring about systemic change through mass civil disobedience.
Extinction Rebellion’s members – so-called ‘rebels’ – have the backing of hundreds of scientists and researchers who fear that catastrophic temperature changes will be irreversible within a number of years.
Belgium’s carbon emissions per capita decreased by almost a third between 1980 and 2014, according to the World Bank. The country’s greenhouse gas emissions however remain significantly higher than the global average.
