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Business Daily

Pacific Islanders building climate resilience

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4796 Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Climate change and disasters continue to imperil the livelihoods and well-being of people in the Pacific Islands.

This is the most pressing issue facing the Pacific today, Ofa Ma'asi-Kaisamy, manager at the Pacific Climate Change Centre, tells the BBC’s Frey Lindsay. And Dr Salanieta Saketa, senior epidemiologist at the Pacific Community's Public Health Division, explains how such events seriously impact people’s health.

We also hear how people are fighting to build resilience and forge new futures. Lusia Latu-Jones, director of Tonga Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship, tells Frey how young Pacific Islanders are creating their own opportunities. And Flora Vano of ActionAid Vanuatu explains how a women-led collective works to help each other prepare for and withstand the challenges they face.

(Photo: High-tide flooding on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands, December 2021; Credit: Giff Johnson/AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Frey Lindsay.

0:11.9

This is the sound of the shoreline on the Tongan Island of Far Far, one of those islands devastated

0:16.9

by a tsunami just a couple of months ago.

0:19.7

Like all the Pacific Islands, Far Far Far Island

0:21.8

on Tonga faces a continuing and worsening crisis in the face of sea level rise and increasing

0:27.9

climate change-related disasters. Now, there's a lot happening in the world at the moment,

0:36.9

from COVID to inflation, to conflict.

0:39.8

And I think for many people, these things have been enough to distract from that issue that has felt most urgent climate change.

0:45.8

But that's not true in the Pacific, where the ongoing climate crisis remains on full display and is getting worse.

0:52.0

Kiribat is not short on natural beauty, but in the face of rising

0:55.6

global sea levels, its future is bleak. To Valu, extremely vulnerable to storms and sea levels.

1:02.5

In the solemn nilems, malnutrition due to food insecurity, rising sea levels. Weather disasters, that seems

1:08.9

to be more frequent these days. So that's the reality that we're living in in Palau.

1:13.8

Our country doesn't contribute that much to, you know, the emission of greenhouse gases and global warming.

1:20.8

And those are just some of the myriad thousands of islands in the Pacific, the blue continent as it's known.

1:25.7

And Pacificers know very well the challenges they're facing and what needs to be done.

1:29.9

For the Pacific communities, the real challenge is not about securing more scientific evidence,

1:35.9

setting new global targets and more top shots.

1:39.2

It is about action for survival, and we all need to shoulder our responsibilities and play our part.

1:47.1

That's Fiamé Naomi Matawafa, the Prime Minister of the Pacific Island Nation of Samoa.

1:52.6

And here's another Pacific Island leader, Hilda Hina, the former president of the Marshall Islands,

1:57.5

which is also seriously threatened by sea level rise.

...

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