EXTINCTION Rebellion have protested at a Southampton Airport event to mark World Environment Day.

Members of the environmental group descended on the River Walk entrance to Marlhill Copse yesterday afternoon, the location for the airports Woodland Walk.

The walk was organised to celebrate World Environment Day but had to be postponed earlier this month after concerns around the number of people that would be attending Extinction Rebellion’s planned protest.

Now though, the event has gone ahead, with members of the group in attendance to highlight “the environmental impacts of expanding Southampton Airport”.

This comes after planning permission was issued to the airport by Eastleigh Borough Council for the extension of its runway.

Extinction Rebellion claims this will lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from flights of up to 370,000 tonnes a year.

It also said that the number of flights by the largest noisiest aircraft will increase from two a week up to 336 a week, increasing noise impacts for 46,000 local people.

The protestors handed out leaflets to people attending the event yesterday and to passers-by, and said the peaceful action did not disrupt the event in any way.

Richard Mould-Ryan from Extinction Rebellion Southampton said: “This seems like an attempt at greenwash by Southampton Airport, linking themselves to World Environment Day to deflect attention from the enormous negative impacts of the expansion of their operations.

“The huge increase in carbon dioxide emissions will harm the global environment by continuing to fuel the climate emergency, and the increased noise will damage the living environment of tens of thousands of residents.

“It’s also ironic that they should use an event at Marlhill Copse to do this, because they want to fell scores of trees to enable the larger jet aircraft to use the airport fully loaded.”

“Although planning permission has been issued, the campaign to prevent this expansion happening is not over.”

Southampton Airport refused to comment, adding: “The airport doesn’t have a comment that it wishes to leave”.