I feel Pacific Island nations can lead
the fights for climate action by declaring this climate emergency.
It is an emergency at the moment, I believe we still have not acknowledged
the level of seriousness and how it impacts our lives.
If we do not declare it as an emergency,
then we are not going to act as if it is an emergency.
My name is Gladys Habu.
I am a very passionate climate advocate here in the Solomon Islands.
One of our favorite things to do when we
go back into the village is to visit this island called Kale.
It was home to my grandparents decades ago and it was so beautiful.
White sandy beaches, lots of trees and wildlife.
Kale has been one of the really important Islands that we've been tracking.
The island was 50,000 m² in size.
It decreased in size significantly
to the point that was completely wiped off the map.
Unfortunately, these aren't little sand cays with a few shrubs on them.
These are large Islands with dense
rainforest vegetation that people would live and camp on.
It was unbelievable that a whole island could disappear in less than a decade.
The loss of Kale is a major push behind
all the climate advocacy that I do
today.
Communities have been lost.
People have been displaced.
Our Islands are sinking and with it not
just a loss of biodiversity but our identity.
I would say our people are fighters because despite all this loss,
we are still out here and waking up every day facing the consequences.
They're building things like stone walls
along the coast to protect the land from further erosion.
They are also building their homes on higher stilts.
We are doing what we can.
Globally
sea level rise is really being driven by human induced climate change.
These extreme rates that we've seen in the Solomons over the last couple
of decades are exactly the sort of rates that we're predicting the entire Earth
will experience as an average in the latter half of this century.
So these people in the Solomons haven't caused this problem.
Their footprint on the planet is tiny.
Their per capita emissions are minuscule.
And that is what hurts me the most because we're not the ones who are entirely
responsible for what is happening to us today.
If we are to solve this crisis, then we need to actually go back to what's
causing it and reverse that to help our planet. In terms of what can be done.
It's really simple. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and that will, in turn, reduce our committed sea level rise.
Gladys and I have worked together for sort of eight years now.
Oh, man.
Honestly, I acknowledge Dr
simon Albert for helping to really amplify
my individual voice, but also that of my community and my country.
We've been able to do that through large media organizations in BBC and CNN.
We did a documentary.
I am so humbled to say that this documentary was then used by BBC as
a teaching material for secondary schools in the UK.
There's an increasing level of skepticism, questioning the science.
I believe these human stories explaining the real life impacts.
This is not some projection of what may or may not happen in the future.
This is now.
Sometimes it's just horrifying just to see how things are changing. On our doorstep
in the Solomon Islands, fellow human beings suffering as a direct
result of our high per capita greenhouse gas emissions.
So hopefully those sorts of stories will try and cut through some of this politics
and divisiveness and really start to convince the broader public that this
is an issue that we need to take some powerful steps on.
Even in the climate places.
COVID has distracted a lot of climate
action activities around the world, but making the most of the virtual world
during this pandemic has helped us engage with more young people.
I would say I've met a lot more young
activists in this journey than I would have ever imagined without this pandemic.
So it has worked in our favor
in that sense, and it has also taught us an important lesson in that even with such
a pandemic in place, we could still come together and discuss
on actions that we can all take together as a community.
As part of my climate advocacy,
I will be participating in the upcoming Highlevel Environmental Ministers meeting,
and we are having environmental ministers from around the Pacific participate
in this virtual conference to discuss climate action in the lead up to COP 26.
Part of what I'll be doing is to re emphasize my call to Pacific Island
governments to declare a climate emergency.
My good minister is act now declare a climate
emergency in your respective countries before entering COP 26.
Let us genuinely express to the world
that this crisis is indeed a matter of life or no life for our Pasifika people.
Thank you very much.
So we've got the ability to turn this ship
around, but we need to make some powerful decisions.
Now there's no other roadway to minimizing these impacts on people like
Gladys' family, but also ultimately on my family and your family.
There's still a lot of people in rural
areas that don't quite understand why these things are happening to us.
And so in a way, I'm also helping to educate my people
about what is happening and what our rights are in this space and what we
should all be fighting for together as a community.