Greta Thunberg: Who is the climate activist and what has she achieved? (2024)

Greta Thunberg is one of the world's best-known climate change campaigners.

She has been credited with raising public awareness, especially amongst young people

Who is Greta Thunberg and how did she become a climate activist?

Ms Thunberg was born in the Swedish capital Stockholm in 2003. Her mother Malena Ernman is an opera singer, and her father Svante Thunberg is an actor.

She first learned about climate change when she was eight.

When she was 11 or 12, she started suffering from depression, according to her father, Svante.

"She stopped talking... she stopped going to school," he said.

Around the same time she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

In summer 2018, aged 15, Ms Thunberg held the first "School Strike for Climate" outside the Swedish parliament.

The protest was widely covered, and hundreds of thousands of young people across the world joined her Fridays For Future strikes.

Mr Thunberg says his daughter became "much happier" after she started campaigning.

She has described her autism diagnosis as a "superpower" which helped motivate her protests.

"Being different is a gift," she told the BBC. "If I would've been like everyone else, I wouldn't have started this school strike."

Between 2019 and 2020, she took a year out of school to concentrate on activism, and became famous for her impassioned speeches to world leaders.

Ms Thunberg has been arrested several times for her participation in environmental protests around the world and fined by the Swedish courts.

What have been her most famous speeches?

In April 2019, aged 16, Ms Thunberg told members of the European Parliament: "Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly, because at the moment they are not."

"I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean," she told delegates. "Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words."

Speaking at a youth protest in Glasgow in 2021, after the city hosted the COP26 climate change summit, she said: "[World leaders have held] 26 COPs. They have had decades of blah, blah, blah - and where has that got us?"

What awards has Greta Thunberg won?

Ms Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year between 2019 and 2023.

Also in 2019, she won the Right Livelihood Award (known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) and Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, and was listed by Forbes as one of the world's 100 most powerful women.

In 2022, she brought out The Climate Book, which contains essays from 100 scientists, writers and activists about how to combat the climate crisis.

What have Greta Thunberg's critics said about her?

She responded with a sarcastic tweet which was liked by several million people and shared widely.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described her as a "kind, but poorly informed, teenager".

What has Greta Thunberg's campaigning achieved?

Although Ms Thunberg has not devised any specific environmental strategies, she is credited with raising public awareness of climate change across the world, especially amongst young people.

Many commentators call this "the Greta effect".