• Leonardo DiCaprio has arrived at Cop26.
• An indigenous Australian woman approached him, urging him to speak out about the problem of fracking.
• Shortly afterwards, the actor met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Leonardo DiCaprio, actor and activist, has arrived at Cop26, the United Nations climate conference currently taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. As he walked through the corridors of the Scottish Event Campus, the convention centre hosting the event, a woman approached him and urged him to speak with indigenous Australian women about fracking practices on their lands.

More news from Cop26:

1. Cop26, 100 nations commit to halting deforestation by 2030
2. A half-million square kilometre marine protected area to be created in the Pacific
3. A pact from Cop26 to reduce methane emissions by 2030

Why an indigenous woman approached Leonardo DiCaprio at Cop26

"Mr DiCaprio, please speak with indigenous Australian women about fracking on their lands. The Australian government has just approved 50 million dollars in fracking on their country," shouted Rikki Dank, an activist, director of an indigenous art gallery in Dubai and spokesperson for First Nations peoples.

Her gesture was also shared on social media by artist Nadurna, who posted the news on Facebook. "I am so proud of my sister for temporarily leaving her life and work in Dubai to go to Glasgow to represent us," she wrote. "We hope [DiCaprio, ed.] heard her."

The meeting with António Guterres

During his first hours in Glasgow, DiCaprio also met with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who recalled that the actor had also been present in 2015, at Cop21, when the Paris Agreement was adopted. "Since that day he has continued to champion its implementation – Guterres wrote in an Instagram post –. At Cop26 I was able to thank him for his commitment to tackling the climate crisis and his support for the United Nations as a messenger of peace." On DiCaprio's jacket, the pin bearing the SDGs – the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals – is clearly visible.

In recent days DiCaprio had also hosted a takeover on his social media channels by Veruschka Dumeni, a student and climate activist. For a few hours, Dumeni leveraged the actor's popularity and appeared in his profile stories to draw attention to the Okavango Basin in Namibia. This treasure trove of biodiversity is threatened by drilling operations by Canadian company ReconAfrica, an oil and gas firm headquartered in Vancouver, which has secured a 25-year concession to drill across an area of 34,000 square kilometres between Namibia and Botswana. The takeover was organised through the association that DiCaprio helped to found, Re:wild, with which he seeks to restore and protect some of the wildest – and most threatened – areas of our planet.

Now all that remains is to wait for his speech at Cop26.