EXTINCTION Rebellion are set to mount a protest at a Southampton Airport event today. 

At 12:30 today, protestors say they will descend on Southampton Airport's Woodland Walk event which has been set up to celebrate World Environment Day. 

Protesters will be near the River Walk entrance to Marlhill Copse where the event is due to take place. 

They will remain there throughout the Woodland Walk which is planned to take place between 1 and 2.30pm. 

Extinction Rebellion say they want to highlight the airport’s attempt to use World Environment Day to "greenwash their expansion plans".

The group says the plans will result in "huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions and noise, damaging the local and global environment for people in the future."

Richard Mould-Ryan from Extinction Rebellion Southampton said, "This will be a peaceful protest by a small number of people and will not disrupt the airport's event in any way. 

"We hope that those attending the event will take a leaflet and listen to what we have to say, but they will not be obstructed and there is no reason why the event should not go ahead as planned."

This comes just weeks after the original event to celebrate World Environment Day was postponed due to safety fears about the planned protest. 

On June 7, Extinction Rebellion announced they would protest the River Walk that day, but upon hearing the news of the protest, airport operations director, Steve Szalay took the decision to postpone. 

He said at the time: “From my perspective it was just a big unknown at 11am what was going to happen.

“We knew we had 25 numbers, we didn’t know how many protestors there was going to be, so there was all sorts of Covid angles there. It just seemed like the right thing to do to call it off.

“Having been here now and seen the protestors, I’m happy we can rearrange it for another day and we can welcome the protestors and factor them into the numbers with whatever Covid restrictions apply then.

“[The event] will happen again.”