COP26: Crowd calls for action at Belfast climate rally
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Protesters carrying banners and placards gathered in Belfast city centre before marching to City Hall
A large crowd of people have held a rally in Belfast city centre to call for action to deal with climate change.
Protesters carrying banners and placards gathered at Cornmarket early on Saturday afternoon to begin their march.
The crowd made its way through the city centre to at City Hall.
There a number of people, including Belfast Lord Mayor Kate Nicholl, took to the stage to make speeches.
The rally, which took place to coincide with the COP26 conference in Glasgow, was a call for Stormont politicians to pass legislation on dealing with climate change.
Hundreds of similar events took place around the world on Saturday, including about 100 demonstrations in other parts of the UK.
The Belfast protest was one many that happened in the UK and Ireland on Saturday
Organisers said about 100,000 people marched in Glasgow where the the COP26 summit is taking place.
Among those to address the rally at Belfast City Hall was Dara McAnulty, a teenage author and naturalist from County Fermanagh.
"We are at a junction as a species and there are two paths in front of us," he told the crowd.
"One - we change our future, we make a difference, we go on the road to restorative justice and climate action.
"Or we can go down the path of further destruction and inevitably the demise of our species."
The Belfast rally took place to coincide with the COP26 conference in Glasgow
Daithí McKay, the vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Climate Coalition, helped to organise the event in Belfast.
"We've heard a lot of promises, we've heard a lot of pledges," he said of COP26.
"But we need much more than that - we need immediate action."
Chloe Ferguson of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union Climate Action Group said street protests could have a "massive impact".
"When we look at what politicians and what our leaders respond to, they listen to what's going to cause them the most bother publicly," she said.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Dublin for a climate rally, while similar events were held elsewhere on the island, including in Cork and Londonderry.