Graphic by Sofia Savid ‘24
By Helen Gloege ’23
Staff Writer
Anuna de Wever Van der Heyden is a 20-year-old climate activist based in Belgium. De Wever began their activism in December 2018 after Belgium decided to not “sign a new declaration on addressing climate change at the COP24 summit,” according to Vogue. De Wever was looking for organizing strategies and a way to respond to Belgium’s inaction when they found fellow climate activist Greta Thunberg’s approach. Two weeks after COP24, de Wever staged “their first protest in the same mold … on the streets of Brussels,” as reported by Vogue.
In a 2020 interview with EuroNews, de Wever stated that this call to action led to “thousands of people on the streets every week, all over the news, claiming a political agenda and forcing our leaders to listen and step up.” Not alone in their work, De Wever was joined by fellow activists Kyra Gantois and Adélaïde Charlier in organizing the School Strike for Climate, also known as Fridays for Future, in Belgium, as reported by SDG Watch Europe.
As they expressed in their interview with EuroNews, de Wever’s climate activism was initially local, until they realized that Belgium’s “political system wasn’t shaped” to allow for concrete change in climate policy. With this realization, de Wever connected with the greater Fridays For Future movement as they aimed to transform “the political agenda and put huge amounts of pressure on our politicians,” as they wrote in a blog post for The 25 Percent.
While they have made a lot of progress and mobilized a great number of people, de Wever has revealed that they face extreme physical and verbal assault from political reactionaries, Pink News reported. According to The Brussels Times, de Wever made a surprise appearance at the Belgian music festival Pukkelpop in 2019, intending “to engage the audience in the action ‘Clap for Climate’ to call for more attention to climate related issues.” While giving a speech, de Wever was “aggressively heckled by a far-right group,” according to Vogue. SDG Watch Europe also reported that de Wever “had urine hurled at [them] and [their] tent was trashed.” For Pink News, de Wever stated that although they’ve received online threats in addition to this in-person harassment, their activism is “way more important than those hate comments.”